


Can You Handle the Heat?

by princehwahwa



Category: ATEEZ (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Corrupt System, Cross-dressing Yeosang, Dark Magic, Death, Devil's Dragons, Dragonmancers, Dragons, Elves, Fights, Halflings, Hunters, King Mingi, Light Magic, Lunar Dragons, M/M, Magic, Minor Sexual Innuendos, Murder, Mystic Dragons, Other Minor Dragons, Other Supernatural Creatures - Freeform, Rescue, Solar Dragons, Stadium, Thunder Houses, Vietnam Soldier Jongho, Violence, Wooyoung has two magics, Yunho Big Halfling Baby, bold of you to assume i know how to tag things, corrupt hunters, ice dragons, life or death, seonghwa is an old boy, thunders, tourney, yes you heard that right
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-12
Updated: 2020-12-24
Packaged: 2021-02-27 19:00:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 39,263
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22680625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/princehwahwa/pseuds/princehwahwa
Summary: Dragons and mortals have lived together side-by-side for as long as the birth of time. Even after all this time, these "dark creatures" are still feared by many of the bravest men. When a threat to all of magic soon arises, Seonghwa and his Thunder of dragons and mancers have to fight back to protect their livelihood.
Relationships: Choi San/Park Seonghwa
Comments: 13
Kudos: 70





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> welcome to the first installment of dragonteez!!!

“Alpha, I still don’t understand how you find any joy in slinking around dimly-lit alleyways like a diseased snake just to try and find recruits for the Thunder,” a red-haired male hisses through his teeth, his back pressed against a concrete wall dripping with something wet and foul-smelling but he didn’t let it press on. He slams his foot against the wall, the buckles of his heavy-leather boots clanking against each other. Too dramatic for his Alpha’s taste but he never commented on his personal preferences.

“Patience, my king.” The raven-haired man standing next to him raised his hand nonchalantly, as if to cut off any segment of his next thought. The crimson-haired male notices the outstretched spikes that adorned the slightly shorter man’s second knuckles. They were black - as most of the items associated with him were - resembling tipped-metal that not even the redhead would dare to touch. Blood has coated those spikes more times than the black-haired male had the patience - which he had plenty of for his lifespan - to even attempt to count. “I’m never wrong in these cases.”

They were waiting outside the backdoor of a popular magic club, The Fever, which harbored witches and warlocks, creatures of the night like vampires and werewolves, but most importantly, dragons and dragonmancers. The thrum of the bass-boosted speakers inside were felt under the concrete that were holding their shoes, the vibrations traveling through the tip of the redhead’s toes and tickling his skull. The Fever was always busy on the weekends, even if it was just a Sunday and people would have to return to their occupations the next morning. Now that was a hangover-induced migraine just waiting to happen, not to mention having to figure out how a half-naked vampire ended up in your bed (Yeosang, you sly dog). The multi-colored lights bled under the crack of the door, pooling in small puddles at the black-haired man’s feet but barely touching the toes of his combat boots, as if they were too afraid to touch a Mystic dragon, as most people were. Well, then again, people thought that the entire race of Mystic dragons was extinct; it was even recorded in major history books. But people always forgot that Park Seonghwa was still existing, not even close to extinction.

“I understand, Alpha,” the redhead nodded, watching the light catch on his Alpha’s knuckle spikes, almost mesmerized by the light reflecting delicately on such deadly weapons, like sunlight pooling to soak a samurai sword before it’s plunged in its victim’s chest and twisted ever-so delicately just to watch the suffering persist. Sometimes Seonghwa was like that but that was life or death situations only, never just for his own enjoyment. Seonghwa appreciated the obedience from the redhead, keeping quiet as he tapped his toes inside his shoe to the muffled beat pulsing through the walls from the club. Magic clubs were never Seonghwa’s thing; the only person who enjoyed magic clubs was Kang Yeosang and that was only in certain situations, definitely not anytime soon. Yeosang blames the vampire.

There’s an inconsistent banging against the walls, Seonghwa’s acute hearing picking up the distinct sound of glass shattering. The redhead sensed it, too, his lax position against the wall is now straighter and firm, Seonghwa noticing how quick he was to react. “At ease, Mingi,” Seonghwa orders, the redhead named Mingi affirming his understanding with a curt nod. “You would think that after all these years of pristine business on these streets, they’d have a more concrete policy on the sport of bar fighting.” Seonghwa nods his head in disapproval despite the Cheshire Cat grin painting his lips upward.

“There’s rumor floating around that the Kasein will become more involved with magic business policy,” Mingi chimes, already seeing Seonghwa’s eyes roll before the first syllable of “Kasein” rolled off his tongue. Mingi immediately shut his mouth again, slouching himself back against the wall.

Seonghwa scoffs, the dim light breathing into a blackened tooth-like charm against a pure gold chain intensifying only a slight bit. An intricate set of scales overlap against the skin of his neck and forearms, shining a beautiful ebony luster under the ill-lit street lamps of the city streets. Seonghwa was usually a poised man of fair temper but something about the Kasein made his blood burn under his skin. “The Kasein has no defined right to insert themselves into an independent ordeal, especially on the public level. The Maddox just wants to flex his muscles on his intimidation meter and quite frankly, I am nowhere near amused.”

The Kasein is a newly-set ranking of laws for all kinds of non-human creatures, but their main focus was to cripple the ability of dragons to prevent an uprising, if they deemed it fit. Seonghwa did not. It was created fifty years ago by the oldest hunter alive, the Maddox, who has more than just a bone or two to pick with Seonghwa. The Kasein is to be followed by all species who were listed in the history books as living; luckily for Seonghwa, Mystics had been labeled as extinct so he was not forced to play the Maddox’s subjugation game. Unfortunately, every other dragon did and in this game, they all lose.

“When are you ever amused, Alpha?” Mingi jokes, shooting a short wink to Seonghwa’s way. Seonghwa offers a genuine smile, laughing lowly in his throat, a glint of joy gleaming against his golden eyes. The Mystic dragon never really laughed at Mingi’s snarky remarks often but today seemed to hold an exception.

“Mm, valid observation, your Highness.” Seonghwa sighs with a hint of disappointment, opening and closing his fist to see the reflected light on his spiked knuckles alter with the slightest movement. “I’m not one to play party to paper politics, you should have that memorized by now, but the Kasein holds no rights to detain us because we have scales. Dragons have kept in clean lines before the Kasein was even given birth to the thought. Now, I will admit to this, not all dragons can keep their head and I can agree that they should be dealt with in the manner most necessary but to throw all dragons in the sought revenge of violent measures is rather extreme and heavily biased. There’s no room for us to grow on our own.” The two hear more glasses shatter inside and the air grow cold. “What on this green Earth is happening in there?”

Mingi had noticed that the scales stretched across Seonghwa’s forearms had hiked upwards, much like mortals would experience goosebumps in chilly temperatures. The two exchange wide-eyed glares, already noticing the fog clouding up their vision from their steady breaths. A drop of water trails from the bridge of Seonghwa’s nose to the tip, dripping away like a leaky faucet to the concrete below them. “An ice dragon? All the way out here?” Mingi ponders, his skin crawling under his scarlet trench coat. “Should we go investigate it, Alpha?”

“Wait it out a little bit, your Highness. Perhaps our dear ice dragon can fend for themselves. Now wouldn’t that be something.” Seonghwa’s hands hide themselves in his pockets, his fingers tracing around his paper carton of cigarettes. Seonghwa did not smoke often but he wasn’t about to set the nearest trash can on fire to stave off the frigid temperature so his bad habit would have to do for now. Mingi watches as Seonghwa’s hand reemerges, slightly tanned with his sable scales, a white rod clenched between his fingers. It wasn’t a show to watch Seonghwa light his dreadful cancer stick; all he did was let a miniature purple flame dance on the pad of his thumb, like his finger was a lighter; but Mingi was always mesmerized. “It’s not polite to stare, Mingi.” Seonghwa’s chest rises as he inhales the lethal chemicals, blowing the smoke through a hole he popped in his lips.

Mingi’s ruby-jeweled eyes averted away from Seonghwa’s direction before Seonghwa had to remind him for a second time. Not like he would, anyway; Park Seonghwa would never repeat himself. More glasses are shattered inside and the scent of heavy iron fills Mingi’s nostrils. Mingi knew that scent like the back of his hand… Blood. Seonghwa couldn’t smell blood like Mingi could; he could differentiate the fires that belonged to different races of dragons but that was pretty much all his heightened senses could be good for. “Alpha.”

“Yes, my king?” Seonghwa flicks the ash off of his cigarette.

“I can smell a lot of blood.”

Seonghwa straightens his posture, his spine parallel with the popcorn wall. “Can you get a clear reading on whose it is?”

Mingi inhales deeply, his nostrils burning from the cold as he attempts to pinpoint the smell. “It’s very muddy. I believe it’s two different types. It smells like that ice dragon but I can’t tell who the other is.” Suddenly, icicles begin to extend from the edge of the gutters wrapped around the magic club’s flat top roof. Ice begins to crawl out of every crack of the building, the club now resembling an urban winter palace. Mingi lets a small amount of his wings unfurl past the slits he had sliced through his black button-up and his ruby-crusted trench coat. 

“Why are you exposing your wings?” Seonghwa asks, tapping the ash clinging onto the filter. 

Mingi adjusts to the stiffness of keeping his wings practically tied to his back for long hours by shaking them out with fervor, the crimson red skin wrapped around the supporting bone wobbling like a piece of laminated paper. There are scarlet spikes adhered to each joint of his wings, more for show than any practical use. “Intimidation factor, Alpha. Plus, you know I can’t keep them behind me for long. Just be grateful I didn’t let out my full wingspan for once.” Mingi had a point; his full-length wingspan was almost straight out of fiction. Seonghwa’s was puny compared to Mingi’s twenty-five-foot one. But with the arrival of even the mere sliver of Mingi’s wings came the vile and twisted horns that protruded from the crowns of his temples. He was a Devil’s dragon for a reason, of course.

Seonghwa nods, even though he doesn’t appreciate the bite of attitude coming from his second-in-command. “I suppose. I don’t believe it will be necessary.” Seonghwa crosses his arms over his chest, leaning back against the wall, taking a long drag from his cigarette before flicking it onto the concrete and snuffing it out with the tip of his shoe. There’s a loud sizzle and a small puddle appears under the cigarette, freezing over almost instantly.

The door of the club bursts open, more glasses being knocked over more audible to the two dragons standing outside of said door. Fog pours out like a flood, like a freshly-opened freezer, the temperature inside the club more numbing than it was outside. People begin pouring out of all doors, faces covered in frost and fingers a horrendous mixture of deep blues and purples from their experience with the hypothermia. It must have reached negative inside, judging from the number of patrons Mingi could see from his angle that were dragging unconscious people along with them. As soon as the crowd of people running into Mingi’s more door-than-window wings has begun to diminish, Seonghwa has already slipped inside, wings unfurling from his back to frame his shoulder blades elegantly. Mingi practically flew in from how quick his steps were.

“This ice dragon has interesting means of expressing their architectural concepts,” Seonghwa remarks, his black claws gingerly caressing the hulled point of an icicle clinging onto the club’s glass rack positioned overhead of the bar. More than half of the original glasses were now glittering on the floor and being crunched under Seonghwa’s feet like dead autumn leaves.

The magic club now resembled something straight out of a fairytale; the water that would spit from the cheap misters now spewed out delicate flakes of snow, icicles decorated the edge of every table, booth, chair, almost anything that had the ability to hold an edge, and ice that coated the floor clung desperately to the soles of both of their shoes. Mingi almost slipped twice just trying to walk in, like he was wearing fuzzy socks on a freshly-waxed hardwood floor. Mingi’s crimson scales rose from the freeze and thinking about fuzzy socks.

“The Kasein would host such a royal fit over this remodel if we even gave them the chance to marvel in this beauty,” Seonghwa smirks, claws clinking against a frozen bottle of whiskey with a hairline crack etched into the neck. Mingi attempts to slide closer, like he could figure skate without a proper blade on his shoe, resembling more of a duckling whose left leg is longer than his right trying to walk to his mother for the first time. “Do be careful, your Highness. The floor is quite slippery.”

Mingi chuckles sarcastically, growing rather irritated with the obvious tease lingering in his obvious observation. He finally finds purchase on a round table under one of the snow misters, the natural dragon’s heat radiating from his palms helping to make the grip easier. Mingi kept ruffling his wings because of all the snowflakes falling down on him. “Thanks for the heads-up,” Mingi hisses. “Are you pouring a celebratory drink?”

“I would, but,” Seonghwa holds the bottle by the neck, suspending it upside down. The liquid that should’ve been dragged down by the direction of gravity doesn’t budge, staying cemented to the bottom of the bottle. An alcoholic's popsicle, Mingi thought to himself. “I’m a bit frozen towards your request.” Mingi wanted to hit himself for laughing, it wasn’t even that funny.

A sudden blue flame shoots across the room, striking the whiskey bottle that Seonghwa had in hand, sending the bottle into an intense flurry of glass shards and iced whiskey. Seonghwa encases himself in the cocoon of his wings, the shrapnel slicing microscopic holes in the ebony skin of his wings that would take a few hours to close up. Mingi launches a red orb of fire in the general direction of where the ice fire originated, a red hellfire beginning to grow in size on the staircase.

“Was that necessary, your Highness?” Seonghwa lifts one of his wings from where it hovered over his head, shaking out any glass bits that were still clinging to the skin. They fall to the ground like glitter with tinkling notes. “Put it out, Mingi.” It wasn’t a request; it was a demand.

Mingi groaned like a child, his head tipping back in frustration, the overgrown nest of red locks grazing against one of his wing’s joints. Mingi flicks his wrist in a certain way, the red fire that had swallowed the magic club’s staircase was immediately snuffed out, only a small tendril of smoke crawling up from the middle step. “Sorry, Alpha. It startled me,” Mingi says, focusing his dragon body heat to creep down and spread out against the soles of his feet, the ice below him melting into puddles and then evaporating into the air, exposing the scuffed up hardwood of the dance floor. “I think someone’s under the staircase,” Mingi whispers.

“Excellent observation, my king,” Seonghwa praises, - which is a foreign sound to hear from the highly-critical dragon fossil - using his core strength to jump up on the bar counter, not even sliding awkwardly due to the thick layer of ice coating the counter. “Get him to go off again, Mingi. I have a plan.” Seonghwa sends off a few hand signals, the other dragon understanding their meaning almost immediately.

Mingi looks around for ways to pose aggravation, noticing the frosted ceiling beam positioned above the seam of the staircase where they were positive their little troublesome ice dragon chose to seek their refuge. Mingi chucks a red ball of fire that grew steadily from his hand towards his target of the ceiling, the impact from hitting the supporting beam sending the entire building into a series of tremors. Seonghwa rolls his eyes, a slowly budding purple flame resting patiently in his calloused palm.

“When I say ‘Get him to go off again, Mingi’, I do not mean cripple the entire concrete structure of the premises, Song Mingi,” the Mystic dragon hissed through sharp teeth.

Mingi was about to spit out a response but was abruptly interrupted by a short man launching blue flames from his hands from the hallway leading to the understairs, each flame aimed at Mingi. Before any had the chance to inflict damage, Seonghwa shot equally-measured purple flames to counteract the attacks, the short man soon losing the potency of his power, finding that his knees buckled under his weight without his knowledge, his entire body unable to stay upright and finding contact with the melting hardwood floor. The fire that pulsed a royal purple flame in Seonghwa’s free hand soon grew cold, bleeding into an iridescent blue flame in an instant. The short man tried to push flames from his palms but all he got was a fizzle of dead sparks.

“W-What? B-But h-how? Are you a hunter!? I thought they didn’t have magic!” the short man yelps, trying to use the rest of his strength to push himself away from the two intimidatingly tall men. He felt like an ant compared to these two and it made the blood in his veins colder than he was used to.

Seonghwa jumps down from his position on the bar counter, jerking his head at Mingi as he approaches the powerless dragon. “Correct assessment, young ice dragon. Hunters are merely mortals with elongated lifespans who just have to dispose of unruly creatures. So, using the context clues that you learned in school, you would come to realize that we are not hunters, are we?” Seonghwa bends over the short man on the floor, his face hovering a few feet from the short man’s. The Mystic dragon lets the fire crawl in between the gaps of his fingers, the flame weaving in and out intricately.

“S-So you’re dragons too?” the short man asks, positioning himself to sit on his elbows, Seonghwa taking a good peek at the ice dragon’s forearm. A Times New Roman fonted “M” was seared into the short man’s flesh, burning an angry red from the irritation.

Mingi draws his fire back from the ceiling beam, leaving a charred black piece of wood crackling from the embers trapped inside. “He’s been manced,” the redhead notes. The fuses of the club’s electrical unit must have thawed because the eerily-bright overhead fluorescent lights begin to come on one at a time, almost blinding the three dragons from the obnoxiously harsh glare of the ceiling lights. The two dragons now had a more defined rendition of the short man’s appearance; stark white hair with stains of vermillion splotches stuck up in places, a beautiful and pristine ivory fur coat soaked in blood, dripping into his oily black slacks to pool into his socks, he was vacant of shoes and adorned multiple rings on both of his hands. His eyes were like sapphires, pulsating a deep blue that was almost intimidating, a white charm glowing brighter under his neck.

“What’s your name, dear?” Seonghwa asks, offering the hand that had his little blue flame dancing a jig between his fingers. Mingi watches the short man intently, only to verify that the ice dragon wouldn’t attempt anything. The ice dragon had a difficult time taking his eyes off that red dragon, examining how the rubies that bedazzled his elegant trench coat had flashed light across the club’s walls like a disco ball. He honestly wasn’t one-hundred percent sure if he had dyed his hair that angry cherry red or if he was born like that but then again, he also wasn’t born into this world with aggressively bleached hair (he had black hair as most Koreans do) so he wasn’t also in the correct stance to infer deeper. The dragon’s eyes and his core beat a blood red, making the ice dragon gulp on his unease.

But that black dragon with the royal purple core was the one that made the ice dragon’s skin crawl. With his eloquent business attire of black blazers and pinstripe slacks, the ice dragon was almost certain that he was the CEO of some huge corporation. Despite his purple core, his eyes bled yellow - almost gold - and had a feline slit splitting them clean in the middle and the ice dragon sure had a difficult time looking away.

Seonghwa drew his hand back, pressing it against his chest with a flair for the dramatic. “Oh, do forgive me for my lack of manners. I’m Park Seonghwa, leader of the Thunder of Horizon.” Seonghwa motions for Mingi to step closer, the red dragon obeying the nonverbal command while flashing a sharp-toothy grin. “This is my protégé and honorable second-in-command, Song Mingi. We did not come here to pose you any harm or threat, my dear. We just want to understand your motives in concern of tonight’s events. Please do not feel pressure to—”

“Park Seonghwa, look out!” the ice dragon yells, a blue crystal stream of magic brushing over the top of his head. The Mystic whips his head around to find a more bloodied man of average height, his hands producing more magic grenades as fast as he could make them.

“Get your scaley asses away from my dragon,” the magic man hisses. “Or this time, I won’t miss.”

Mingi bares his teeth, already letting his red hellfire pour like rivers from his hands. His wings soon take possession over Mingi’s literal fight-or-flight response, his wings beating aggressively to lift his body off the ground and into the air where he could formulate a better strategy of attack.

“I presume that he is your rightful mancer, yes?” the Mystic inquires, the blue flame that was dancing happily in his hand earlier began to quiver in fear. “Even your quaint little flame knows his intimidation factor, the poor thing.” Seonghwa grazes the violently shaking fire with his index finger, the flame leaning into Seonghwa’s touch. The ice dragon can only watch with wonder in his baby blue eyes. “Tell me your name and I’ll gift your property back. You have it on my word.”

“I-I’m Kim Hongjoong. I-I’ve heard a rumor floating around that dragons can unmance other dragons so I came here to try and find one but it was a trap set by my mancer. Please, I just want to be free, S-Seonghwa sir.” Hongjoong’s voice is on the brink of pleading, the ice dragon crawling onto his knees in front of Seonghwa.

“I, myself, do not harbor the ability. But Mingi can,” Seonghwa smiles, his fingertips brushing against Hongjoong’s chin, the blue fire that Seonghwa was originally holding began to lick at Hongjoong’s paper white skin, melting under the surface of his cheeks and giving his blue eyes a boost of life.

Mingi had the entire magic club roaring in hellfire, the mancer beginning to show signs of fatigue that only Seonghwa had the ability to sense. Mingi swerved erratically between floor-to-ceiling pillars, the mancers magic missing him every time. The Devil’s dragon was careful about unpacking his entire wingspan since this particular venue was too small to do such a thing. He edged a hard right, the blue crystal magic slicing through a pillar on its way to target one of Mingi’s wings. Seonghwa noticed almost immediately, whispering a “Stay here” to Hongjoong before letting his wings take him up to soar, deflecting the en route magic grenade with a purple flame, sending it tumbling back to the aggravated mancer, knocking him clean off his feet. “You’re gonna have to start keeping track of how many times you save me, Seonghwa,” Mingi jokes.

“Counting that one would make two-hundred seventy-three, your Highness, but who’s counting?” Seonghwa teases, the two laughing in the sky. “Unmance the ice dragon. That’s his mancer trying to incapacitate us.”

“I had a feeling,” Mingi scoffs, saluting to his Alpha as he turns his body to land where the ice dragon obeyed his command, still quaking in his fur-lined boots from the anxiety of watching this. “I’m Song Mingi. Follow me.”

“Kim Hongjoong,” the ice dragon bows, quick on his toes to make it out the back door where Mingi was leading him. It never really entered his mind that he was putting a large sum of trust in a smooth-talking dark dragon and his first mate which could’ve gone south quickly and he would be sold on the black market as dragon chunks in a can. Hongjoong was too far in his head to even entertain the idea that these were dragons with malicious intentions, only hoping that this Mingi guy would be able to unmance him so he could roam the streets of Seoul without an evil pair of eyes boring holes in the back of his skull. He would get Mingi to unmance him and then he would run away as fast as he could. Mingi found a spot behind a dumpster, waving over Hongjoong to squat down next to him.

Mingi seemed to be a connoisseur in jewels because under his trench coat was a scarlet lace crop top fitted tightly against his chest, beautiful gems of ruby decorated throughout the thin fabric. Mingi had no undershirt underneath, exposing limited slivers of his crimson red scales laid out against his chest and crawling up his neck to stop at the seam of his jaw. Hongjoong tilted his head a tad to take note of the ink-black pentagram against his left jugular, small cherry rhinestones glued at each corner of the star. Was this how all Devil’s dragons looked? Well, Hongjoong had suspicions that he was a Devil’s dragon.

“Give me your arm, love,” Mingi requests calmly, the ice dragon obliging without delay. Mingi lets his fingers brush against the sensitive skin around the mancement mark, Hongjoong quietly hisses at the painful sensation shooting up his spine from even the feather-light touch of Mingi. “Yikes, is this recent?” There’s a loud bang inside the walls of the club but Mingi let the pang of concern for his Alpha in his chest burn until the fire snuffed itself out.

“Mm, it’s a few weeks old. He found me while I was bussing tables at the Fever. He said there was a clogged toilet in the mens’ restroom so I went to check it out and was attacked from behind. I woke up in someone else’s house and saw that I was newly manced. Then a rumor started dragging out across Seoul about dragons that made it their mission to unmance abused dragons so I came back to the Fever and found my mancer drinking. So, I went off, but I held back because it’s hard to deal with the guilt of killing someone. It morphed into a magical bar fight and I eventually ended up torching the place. That’s why it looked like an ice palace when you two came in.”

“Glad we came when we did,” Mingi grins, small canines poking past his cherry red lips. “Are you sure you want to be unmanced? It’s a painful process and if you’re in bad health, you might not be able to make it.” Despite the sense of urgency behind Mingi’s words, his voice was composed, like he did this twenty times a week. No, a day.

Hongjoong nods eagerly, not even a hint of hesitation in his motions. “I’d rather die than stay manced to that power-hungry lunatic. Just do it, Mingi.”

Mingi further rolls up Hongjoong’s fur coat sleeve, letting the large sum of his hellfire concentrate heavily into his gigantic palms. “It’s just protocol, love. Mancers can illegally mance but dragons can also illegally unmance. It’s like sex; consent on both sides, you know?”

“Can’t believe you used sex analogies on the asexual guy,” Hongjoong grins, watching as the Devil’s dragon unbuckled the heavy restraints on his knee-length combat boots, scuffed up and fraying from age, peeling off one shoe and one of his black socks. “Quite an interesting way to come out to a complete stranger,” Mingi comments.

“I have my quirks,” Hongjoong winks, taking the balled-up sock from Mingi’s hand. “What’s this for?”

Mingi takes it from Hongjoong’s hand, waiting for the perfect moment to stuff his sock into Hongjoong’s mouth, the ice dragon raising an eyebrow. “Just trust me when I say you’re gonna need it.” Finally, for the first time tonight, the alarm lights began flashing in front of Hongjoong’s eyes at this reality that came with this unmancement. Second thoughts began to blind him from the sight of freedom from his mancer but he decided that this was his best option. Actually, it was his only option. “I won’t start until you tell me, alright, love?”

Hongjoong shakes three fingers in his face, the Devil’s dragon already catching on with what the ice dragon was asking for. “Three… Two… One.”

Hongjoong’s scream is muffled by the sock, sounding more like a garbled noise than a proper yelp of pain. Mingi’s red hot hand is compressed against the small mancement mark, the alleyway that they were hiding in beginning to smell of cooked dragon flesh, the audible sizzle that came with Mingi letting his fire course through Hongjoong to destroy the process of mancement. Tears began spilling from Hongjoong’s aggressively blue eyes, treading down his ruddy cheeks to drip down his chin, pooling under his scales stained white but tipped with black from frostbite. Even through the intense sounds of sizzling that came with singeing Hongjoong’s flesh, he could hear Mingi whispering soft apologies under his breath, finding that his ears began to grow numb until he thought he was hearing noises underwater. The sensation of numbness began to overtake his body, his heartbeat beginning to slow rapidly. Hongjoong had no more strength to let his eyes remain open, his entire body collapsing in Mingi’s hold, his breaths too slow to be considered remotely stable.

“Son of a—” Mingi mutters under his breath, lifting his hand away from Hongjoong’s arm to see the unmancement progress. The mark was now missing, the ice dragon’s skin was currently mottled with charred pieces of red and black skin, a rather disgusting sight that would heal in the next week. “Alpha! You have to come out here! Quick!”

It took two more tries but Seonghwa finally flew out of the bar, standing back on the concrete with his arms crossed. “I’ve immobilized the mancer for the time being but I do not have long, my king.”

“We need to take him back to the Thunder House. He’s unconscious now but if we don’t give him the proper care, we could have a melted popsicle on our hands. Please, Alpha.” The lilt of desperation in Mingi’s voice was almost heartbreaking; Seonghwa has never seen Mingi so anguished over a dragon like this, not even when they picked up Yeosang or Jongho on their journeys.

Seonghwa doesn’t even give it another read through, nodding tersely. “If you fly with him in cargo, you’ll never make it in time. Take the car, it’ll shave half an hour if you obey traffic laws but quite frankly, I’m not a police officer to stop you from glueing yourself to the gas pedal. Go quickly, he’s losing fire.” The backdoor flies open, Seonghwa landing a well-placed back kick under his sternum without even looking to see if it was the mancer. “I’ll take care of this unruly individual. Leave the premises at once!” Seonghwa’s wings widened again, blinding the mancer from the view of his now ex-dragon fleeing with the red dragon that almost torched his head off.

Mingi slings Hongjoong’s arms over his shoulders, his feet hovering off the ground thanks to Hongjoong’s short height. Mingi adjusts a bit more before finding a good hold on the unresponsive ice dragon, practically bolting out of the alleyway and into the bustling streets of Seoul, still steaming over the frozen outburst that happened in the Fever. He hears a few people whisper if Hongjoong was killed by “that there hunter” besides the twenty-five-foot wingspan contradicting the assumption, brushing them off as he tried to remember where the hell he parked the car.

Mingi knew that this next part was going to be more dangerous, as already warned by Seonghwa himself, but with his memory failing him, this was his only choice. The Devil’s dragon brought Hongjoong in front of him, lifting him entirely off the ground bridal style, letting his wings properly unfold behind him, the towering width of his crimson wingspan earning the attention of the people on the city streets. Mingi angled his feet just right before his wings began to beat ferociously, kicking up the city dust, the dragon finally lifting off the ground and into the star-peppered night sky.

The flight would take two hours from the belly of Seoul’s downtown all the way to their Thunder House in rural Seoraksan and time was an enemy in this situation. Mingi was never good at math but he knew just how to slice that measly time in half, already gunning it back to the eastern side of the sky.


	2. Chapter 2

The sun pierces through the faux wooden blinds in Mingi’s bedroom, shining obnoxiously in Hongjoong’s face. The ice dragon groans, earning the attention of Mingi who was reading one of Yeosang’s books in a rocking chair, Seonghwa standing next to the Devil’s dragon, rubbing his shoulder soothingly.

“Hongjoong?” Mingi closes his book, bringing himself out of the chair and to the bedside, Seonghwa’s head perking up to see the glimpse of Hongjoong’s glittery blue eyes.

“Oh, my head,” Hongjoong moans, using some of his regaining strength to sit upright. Mingi repositions the pillows from behind Hongjoong for him to lay up against, his actions merely carrying all of the care in the world he had for Hongjoong. “Where am I?”

“You’re in the Thunder House of the Thunder of Horizon,” Seonghwa informs him. “More specifically, Song Mingi’s bedroom. You might have noticed from the tacky assortment of different shades of red he’s adorned against his walls.”

Mingi glares at Seonghwa with a threatening expression. “Alpha, I usually don’t ask you to leave but I need some time to help Hongjoong to his surroundings, please.”

Seonghwa bows respectfully, turning to leave the two dragons alone. “As requested, my king.” Seonghwa is almost out of the room entirely, snapping his finger at a certain revelation, speaking with his back turned towards the two, head edged to the side. “Do try to remember not to keep ultimate possession of our guest now. My patience for Yeosang’s desperation antics has been wearing terribly thin for the past three days.” Seonghwa waves his hand theatrically, the heavy hickory oak doors closing with an echo.

“Mingi-hyung,” Hongjoong whines. “Why does he keep calling you king? Are you a king?”  
  
Mingi reaches for a glass of water on the bedside table, offering it to Hongjoong’s hands. “We don’t use honorifics here since no one’s age is what it seems. Plus, it makes us feel really old. Drink this, it’ll help the headache.” 

The cold surface of the glass feels amazing under Hongjoong’s sweltering palms. The ice dragon took a tiny sip, almost recoiling back at the bitter taste. “What did you put in here?” Hongjoong’s fingers began to freeze the liquid in the glass unintentionally, tiny white flowers with yellow middles floating to the surface as newly-formed ice cubes.

“It’s feverfew flowers. They help with migraine headaches. Seonghwa was a medicinal herb doctor in China around the year 1200 BCE, I believe. Saved a lot of lives, too. I see your fire didn’t take too kindly to them.” Mingi laughs, taking the glass from Hongjoong’s hand and placing it on the nightstand neighboring the bedside. “You asked a question, correct?”

“Yes, I did. Are you a king, Song Mingi?” Hongjoong asks again, curiosity coloring his tone beautifully.

Mingi turns from the bed, folding his arms into his chest as he begins to pace the room, making sure that he never laid his eyes on Hongjoong. Seonghwa was right about the obnoxiously red room coupled with its matching accessories. The four walls holding the massive room together were painted blood red, accented with fine print Chinese scriptures and elusive old folk dragons Hongjoong would see in the Sichuan cuisine windows. His bed was the size of two king mattresses smashed together (why does Mingi even need that much room?), all of the comforters and pillows stained scarlet. Closet doors and dresser drawers were painted darker shades of that color and Hongjoong was pretty convinced that if he went into his bathroom, Mingi’s toilet would be red, too. Mingi lived in and around the color red; Hongjoong took note of that.

“I _was_ a king. A rightful king, at that. Let’s just say my Draconian age, my real age, is a little over six-hundred years, give or take a decade or two.”

“You look so young though,” Hongjoong smiles, the Devil’s dragon accidentally peeking up at the boy on his bed, his heart feeling full at the timid grin.

“A dragon core’s abilities does wonders for the skin,” Mingi teases, his smile donning those tiny hulled canines pressed against his apple red lips. “But there was a point in time before I became a dragon. I was born in the Joseon-era, sometime around the thirteenth century but the full date slipped my mind centuries ago since dragons never deemed it necessary to celebrate birthdays; I’m digressing though. Believe it or not, which I couldn’t see why you wouldn’t, I was a member under the royal bloodline, as secondary to my uncle. My father had died from a death of mysterious circumstances and my uncle never bore a son so I was next in line.

“The coronation ceremony was beautiful; a historic ritual that was practiced for centuries, sometimes even today, more or less. I wore the crown and the family ring for three days. Three days, I was ‘the angel’s heir’, the one that the conjoined nation of Korea came to adore. And then, my younger brother let his jealous blood beseech him into trying to get rid of me. He started holding talks with witches trapped in our palace dungeons to find the perfect way to sabotage my rule without landing any suspect of injury. And then, he found what he was looking for.” Mingi picks up the charm, a blood red thing shaped like a tooth that was strung up by a blackened gold chain. Bewitching streams of a deeper shade of red swirled around, a mysterious aura surrounding the Devil’s dragon.

“It’s a Devil’s dragon core, the second most powerful core after the Mystic, of course. It’s almost as old as time itself, rebranding mortals into dragons and making them lose even their most concrete pillars of sanity. You have to have true tenacity and motive of power to beat the spell of mind-numbing. There are still days where I find my drive slipping and I find the desire to just snatch my core off my neck to finally be done with it. But Seonghwa always tells me that it’s never worth it because I don’t get to reverse the past and stay a king. It would never change anything.

“My younger brother and his ragtag circus of friends found me asleep perched upon my throne. Ruling a kingdom was beyond tiring but it was what I was good at, it was my calling in life. When I wasn’t even able to jolt myself awake to stop the things that would soon happen to me, that core was laced around my neck and the damage was done. I fell from my throne, screaming in agony as my spine contorted atrociously to set in my new wings which burst through the skin, soaked in blood. The horns came second, twisting vilely until they cracked through my skull, my entire outline shaped like that of a demon. My brother summoned the royal guards, demanded that I be hanged for consoling with evil spirits under the influence of my reign, and was quick to snatch that crown off my head and position it perfectly on his.”

Hongjoong swallows hard, his blue eyes widened like those of a doe. He didn’t realize that his hands were clenching nervously at the scarlet comforter, knuckles whiter than his paper-pale skin. “So he just took the throne from you like that? Didn’t you try to fight it at all? Surely there must have been someone to believe you.”  
  
“What was the point of attempting to spit out the truth when it sounds like a lie? Not to mention that I looked like Satan’s spawn in the middle of the throne room so I definitely had nowhere to stand. Luckily, none of them were strong enough to pin down my newly-cursed power and I broke through the roof, my wings flapping aggressively while tears blurred my vision. I met Seonghwa collecting herbs in the forest after flying for hours.”

“Was he an herb doctor in the Joseon era, too?” Hongjoong asks.

Mingi nods, a small smile threatening to crack across his lips. He reaches for the water glass again with its flower ice cubes, urging it into the ice dragon’s hands again. “It just happened to be his calling in life. There’s a war phase that all of Seonghwa’s soldiers would say in the wars that he fought bone and teeth for: ‘He’s a damn good soldier but he’s a damn better medic.’”

Mingi could already hear Seonghwa’s nagging words in his mind; _“They only said those things to keep their heads on their shoulder on their accord” “Flattery is man’s strength to save themselves but it’s a dragon’s obstacle”_ and such philosophical proverbs like those. Deep down though, Mingi knew it was a secretly enjoyed guilty pleasure. That just happened to be stemmed from a Mystic dragon’s superiority complex, as Seonghwa would often say if he caught himself slipping.

“So then Seonghwa took you under his wing and you began to form your own little Thunder and establish yourselves under his direction, right?” Hongjoong raises the glass to his lips, letting the water spill down his throat, the liquid going down easier than last time. The ice dragon began chugging his feverfew water like he was on the brink of dehydration, catching a feverfew ice cube between his teeth, crunching on it with a smile as he anticipated the happy ending.

“Seonghwa never told me he was a dragon. He wasn’t as proud of his appearance and abilities like he is now. His core hid his scales and he watched the world through phony brown eyes. He didn’t do much honestly. Just spit out the solid truth.”

_“Jealous blood never runs as thick as vengeful blood.”_

Mingi could already see himself lying on his back in Seonghwa’s small abode, rented out by one of the strangest landlords Mingi had ever met. He was rigid as a plank on a sleeping mat, Seonghwa sitting back on his heels, his eyes glued on the wall above Mingi’s head. He was placing delicate stems of rosemary in a glass vial with a rusted pair of tweezers.

_“The thing about a dragon of your race, currently, is that they’re prideful. Don’t be a king’s fool to let it swallow you whole,”_ Seonghwa says, flicking the vial with his fingernail.

_“Are you some kind of incompetent charlatan? Fix me, I order it!”_ Mingi growls, the natural brown of his eyes breaking to reveal a sinister bright red iris.

Seonghwa laughs, placing the vial cork-side down on the floor next to his foot. _“Incorrect assessment, my dear. I’m as real as it gets so I suggest you keep your rabid tendencies to an absolute minimum. Also, you have no power to order anything; you have no royal ground to stand on.”_

That’s when Mingi snapped. He shoved that herbal doctor to the ground with his feet, Seonghwa’s head slamming into the floor below him. Mingi could’ve stayed and dished out everything he had on that stupid herbal quack but he forcefully slid the door open, almost knocking it completely off the roller track. He wouldn’t let himself be completely mocked by an inferior power. That’s when his pride began to poison his veins and a vile hunger for cold blood began to possess him. He gave his brother, the new king, three days with the crown he had done for Mingi before taking everything that the ex-king ever was.

The screams of pure terror that rang through his eardrums would still haunt him in his sleep. Smells of blood blossomed in his nostrils as a hellfire that he didn’t know how to properly put out poured from his palms like rivers. Curses at “the demon” were thrown left and right while crying children were scrambling to find the consoling arms of their mothers. The palace was losing its structural stability and many rooms collapsed in on themselves, killing whatever person was trapped inside. Mingi wasn’t focused on the number of people that were dying by his hands; all he cared about was ending the life of his insensitive younger brother.

Mingi cornered him in the throne room where the drama all began. Ceiling pillars had collapsed in the way of the door and the windows were too small and high to successfully jump out of. Inconsistent blubbers of apologies and begging for another chance left his brother’s quivering lips, the younger boy eventually falling to his knees in his pleas. They all fell on Mingi’s deaf ears.

_“I thought you’d carry more self-restraint but you’re just as immoral as your own brother.”_

Seonghwa was standing behind Mingi, ebony wings spread wide and shaking out dust and ash from when he successfully flew through the gaps of debris. His brown eyes melted into gold, a set of claws tipped black where his fingernails should’ve been. Tiny white teeth sharp as daggers stretched past his gums, a wicked grin curling his lips at the corners. But what Mingi noticed first was the blackened tooth-like charm held up by a solid gold chain, almost like the one he had on his neck. A dragon core.

_“Never compare me to that drowned rat. I was a king and he doused my fire with a new fire. It’s only an eye for an eye,”_ Mingi snarls, throwing a ball of fire in Seonghwa’s stomach, the black-winged dragon ducking the attack.

Seonghwa has a fierce look in his eyes, locking them with Mingi. He shoots a royal purple flame from his palm, aiming square for Mingi’s chest, not relenting until the purple flame shifts as red as Mingi’s core. The flames that were licking up the walls of the throne room began to dim until they were snuffed out entirely, Mingi’s head whipping around feverishly at the destruction of his carnage. _“It doesn’t have to end like this, your Highness. Simply let him go and you won’t have to suffer the next two decades of your dragonhood drowning in fruitless regret.”_

_“What do you mean ‘the next two decades’?”_

Seonghwa rolls his eyes as if he were annoyed by the mere thought Mingi just posed. _“A dragon core merely traps you in this guise for twenty winter solstices. In more simplistic terms, roughly twenty years. Then, you can do whatever you want to it. Do you really want to live with the unrelenting culpability of killing your own brother?”_

Mingi looks back at his cowering brother clutching himself in fetal position in the corner where Mingi trapped him. Mingi could see the pure trepidation set in his eyes, his mind beginning to quickly flash memories across it. From the time they would run amuck in the castle halls to the haggling of the kitchen staff for just one more dessert after eating their fifteenth, Mingi shared these memories with his brother. The little brother that he loved, no matter how much he made his blood boil.

_“I’m not going to be the monster that he made me,”_ Mingi speaks firmly. There’s another rumbling in the throne room, dust falling from newly-formed cracks in the ceiling. _“I won’t stoop to your level, brother, no matter what.”_

_“My king, I do believe that you’ve compromised the structural integrity of this building and I find it in our best efforts to evacuate now,”_ Seonghwa suggests, Mingi turning from his brother to face the black-scaled dragon. That was Mingi’s first mistake.

It all happened too fast to prevent it. Charred pieces of the ceiling began to buckle and cave in, the section above Mingi’s brother losing its stability first. Mingi let out a guttural scream as the pieces of the ceiling crashed down on his brother, his crown rolling away from the debris until it teetered to a stop. Blood from Mingi’s fingers and soot caked up the cracks in between the jewels, the usually bright gold base tarnished with the heat and ash. Mingi couldn’t bring it upon himself to wear it again… Ever.

“Is it the crown in that case right there?” Hongjoong points towards a glass box, a blackened gold crown set with blood red rubies scattered intricately. A pentagram similar to the one on Mingi’s neck was engraved dead set in the middle.

Mingi found himself returning back to the present, not even realizing that he was balanced on the edge of his bed, taking a gentle grip of Hongjoong’s hands. “No, that’s my show crown, a gift from Seonghwa. I wear it to special events by Seonghwa’s request. The crown that you’re thinking of is in a display case in the hallway along with a few other valuable trinkets like Jongho’s dog tags and Yeosang’s annotated copy of _MacBeth_.”

“So then what happened next, after your brother died?”

Seonghwa didn’t try to drag Mingi away from the carnage that was crushing his brother to death. Mingi used his newfound strength to peel back the layers of burnt wood suffocating his brother but he was too late… A severed ceiling pillar had penetrated through his heart, killing him instantly. His brown eyes were absolutely lifeless, bulging from the sockets in an inhumanely cruel way. Blood gushed from his lips like a sickening waterfall, Mingi smearing it across his cheek and staining his fingers with the vermillion stuff. Blood, it was _everywhere_ , unavoidable and mocking.

_“Fix him,”_ Mingi mumbles as he paints his own jaw in his grief with his brother’s blood, the Devil’s dragon now looking like something straight out of a horror film with his claws stretched out and his wings twitching wickedly. _“Fix him, I order it! If you want to call me a king then fix! Him!”_ The red of Mingi’s eyes intensifies, spitting out every syllable with lethal amounts of venom.

_“I’m a Mystic dragon who practices herbal medicine. That doesn’t entail that I’m a pure miracle worker, your Highness,”_ he responds, his arms crossed over his chest. _“We need to leave the premises now or we could end up just like him. I propose the notion that we exit now, your Highness.”_

_“Why do you keep calling me that!?”_ Mingi yells, charging at Seonghwa with claws spread open, reaching out for the black dragon’s neck. Surprisingly, Seonghwa lets Mingi choke him out, Mingi’s strength holding him up by the neck, his feet barely grazing the floor.

Seonghwa merely smiles, tiny canines poking past his bottom lip. _“You really underestimate me, my king. I can see something in you that I’ve never noted in a king in all of my years of living. Solid in your response yet carrying the border of emotion. You lack the disgusting quality that most kings harbor of lust for control. You’re the only person who deserves the title of king so I will call you as such.”_ There was no straining of Seonghwa’s words like Mingi expected from cutting off the black dragon’s air supply.

_“Who the hell are you?”_ Maybe it was fear reflecting across his red eyes, both his newly-found eye color and from the strain of crying, but Mingi put the black dragon back down on the floor. Seonghwa flicks out the cuffs of his long sleeve shirt, the wings aiding in brushing off dust on his shoulders. _“Park Seonghwa, member of one of the oldest Mystic dragon families alive.”_

_“There’s different kinds of dragons?”_

_“Not as many as there could be but it's a healthy sum. You’re a Devil’s dragon, the third most powerful next to Mystic and Siren. You have the ability to harness the most dangerous fire that even the bravest men fear: a raging hellfire born from the deepest circles of Hell itself, if you choose to believe in such a thing. I’m a Mystic, the most powerful of them all. I possess the ability to take dragon fire and store it in my own power supply, like so.”_ Seonghwa aimed a flame that was mixed with purple and red hues into Mingi’s chest, the Devil’s dragon stumbling backward from the hit. Seonghwa’s fingers pick Mingi’s chin up, letting the red portion of the fire melt into Mingi’s skin. _“Your first mistake when we met was to gloss over my capability. I suggest that you don’t do it again.”_

“So, I fell for Seonghwa’s words and stayed by his side for the next seven centuries which leads us to today. I earned the role as his second-in-command and we took in two, now three, other dragons. Soon, we established ourselves as the Thunder of Horizon, one of the main four to represent the hundreds of Thunders across the Asian continent.”

“Who are the other three?” Hongjoong asks.

“There’s us, Horizon. Then there’s Egotistic, the all-female Thunder to represent the women. They’re very seclusive and selective as to who they take in. I believe they currently only have three members. The third is the Thunder of Eclipse, mostly comprised of born Lunar dragons and is one of the first Thunders ever properly established. Finally, the most recent is Valkyrie, the youngest Thunder to be considered one of the influences. They’ve been taking in a lot of younger dragons in, a good mix of rare and common ones.”

“Do they call you king as well? D-Do I need to call you king?”

“No no no no,” Mingi laughs heartily, shaking his hands in disagreement, “No, only Seonghwa calls me that. Although, Jongho tends to call me ‘your royal crankiness’ when he’s in a bad mood. Just call me Mingi. Speaking of Jongho, we should probably go meet them.” Mingi pats Hongjoong’s hands, using his lower body strength to lift himself back up to his feet.

“I was sabotaged, too!” Hongjoong says suddenly, the Devil’s dragon turning back towards Hongjoong, a slight tilt of his head as if he was asking for the rest of the story. “I didn’t live a good elementary school life. I was bullied… A lot,” Hongjoong chuckles awkwardly, clearing his throat. “One day, they brought a dragon core to school and I was too stupid and vulnerable to even realize that it was a real one. They wouldn’t stop pestering me about it. ‘Maybe being a dragon will make you taller, Hongles’, ‘Maybe you can get rid of those chunky glasses and look normal for once.’ I eventually succumbed to the pressure from my peers, snatched up that dragon core, and put it around my neck and I changed as soon as I did. Ice shot erratically through my little eight-year-old hands and white scale sliced through my skin, tipped black with frostbite and red from the blood. It was excruciating, especially for a little second-grader. One of the teachers who worked as an unlicensed hunter shot a tranquilizer dart and I don’t remember anything after that.”

Mingi sits back down on the bed, his chapped thumbs swipe away tears that were dripping down his ivory cheeks. “Hey, you don’t have to worry about any person hurting you like that. Under Seonghwa’s protection, you’re untouchable and I won’t let anyone hurt you.”

A knocking at the door startles the two dragons, Mingi waving a hand to open the doors without even getting up to touch them. “Blood magic. Bleed on these old floors and you’re granted passage to a majority of these rooms,” Mingi explains to Hongjoong.

“I do regret to intrude on your colloquy but our dear Yeosang has become rather ill at ease at not being able to acquaint himself with our lovely visitant. Please prepare to reconvene downstairs in the parlor room as soon as possible unless you wish to deal with the unbearable nightmare of a hot and bothered Yeosang.” He knocks twice on the door jamb. “Thank you, your Highness.” Seonghwa leaves again, leaving the double doors open this time around.

“Oh boy,” Mingi sighs, standing up from the mattress. “Come on, the longer we keep him waiting it will cost our heads on a pike.” Hongjoong soon gets up to follow, lacing his hand in Mingi’s. “I thought you said you were ace?”

“I am, I just don’t mind cuddle piles, holding hands, and kissing from time to time,” the ice dragon giggles.

Mingi chuckles too, escorting Hongjoong down two flights of elegant staircases with delicate twists, Hongjoong’s mouth gaping wide at literally everything. From the vaulted ceilings holding up dazzling crystal chandeliers, wallpapered walls with framed and ancient paintings, hardwood floors that shined with their reflections, and display cases of personal artifacts tucked away in spotlighted corners. Hongjoong saw a bent and burnt chain of dog tags in one, a beat-up book with _MacBeth_ on the cover, and a tarnished gold crown stained red in places that made Hongjoong’s stomach turn in another. “You seem to be interested in the display cases,” Mingi observes.

“How old is the oldest thing you guys have?”

“Park Seonghwa,” he says flatly. “Almost as old as time itself. Some of the first historians thought that he was a living pterodactyl back in—”

There’s a very shrill shriek that almost pierces both of their eardrums followed by a click of high heels. A man slightly taller than Hongjoong comes into view, surprisingly decked out in a mesh sleeved shirt with fishnet fingerless gloves dyed burgundy. Another set of fishnets stretch across his legs, an insanely short pair of leather shorts with a button fly instead of a zipper fly laid on top of them. He wears ridiculously tall stiletto boots the same shade as his fishnets, making him almost as tall as Seonghwa. His hair was an ashy blonde, yellow scales overlapped on his neck and forearms, unfortunately making his unmatching outfit appear tacky. He teeters over to Hongjoong with small steps, taking the ice dragon in a tight hug. The maroon and black feathers of his boa hanging from his neck tickle Hongjoong’s nostrils. “Finally! That little devil’s been holding you up for three days straight.” The boy takes the boa from his neck, stringing it around Hongjoong’s neck to bring him closer. “Aren’t you a delicious little thing?” He giggles, tapping a red painted finger on Hongjoong’s nose. “The name’s Kang Yeosang, my beautiful little snowflake.”

“This is Kim Hongjoong,” Mingi says tersely, pulling Yeosang off of Hongjoong. “And he’s off-limits, you pretty little peacock.” He smiles sarcastically as he flicks up the tip of Yeosang’s boa.

Yeosang guffaws. “You? Actually snatching up our charming Jack Frost here before I got the chance to let my paws run all over him? Quite the dreamer, little devil.” Yeosang’s smirk is wicked and his giggle is beyond cruel. Yeosang hooks a finger under Hongjoong’s chin, his orange eyes locking with Hongjoong’s baby blue ones. “Mingi, our little devil. The silliest dragon to roam the grounds.”

“He doesn’t have romantic attractions, sunshine,” Mingi spat, watching in amusement as Yeosang’s hand drops back down to his side and he’s taking steps backward, almost tripping over on air because of his heels. “Always one to assume, Kang Yeosang.”

“Are you two quite done? I swear, I’m always contravening in your quarrels one way or another,” Seonghwa hisses, arms crossed over his chest and his posture straight as a pin, firm. Seonghwa’s in long sleeves like the night at the Fever but his shirt is more flowy, ancient dragon outlines decorating the piece of fabric tucked into a black pair of slacks. The look in his amber eyes was fervid, the two bickering dragons shutting their mouths immediately. “I do apologize for their rather childish behavior. I’m Park Seonghwa, leader of this quaint little Thunder. Here, you’ve met Song Mingi, my second-in-command and right hand man. Kang Yeosang, the boy who refuses to take his heels off indoors—”

“My house, my rules,” Yeosang bites back.

“—acts as our ‘royal’ guard. He’s in charge of keeping the Thunder House and its current occupants safe from harm. And this is Choi Jongho, our lieutenant of firearms and weaponry. He doesn’t really speak much, as you could tell.”

The boy named Choi Jongho offers a curt wave accompanied by a soft-spoken “Hey” that sounded a lot colder than it should have. He was leaning against the arm of an overstuffed leather couch, his royal purple eyes never leaving Hongjoong for any reason. He seemed to dress more comfortably than any other dragon on the grounds; a simplistic purple sweater with black swirls, a black pair of jeans, and a tattered pair of combat boots. The only people without shoes on were Hongjoong, Mingi, and Seonghwa.

Hongjoong bows his head, the others following suit. “I’m Kim Hongjoong. Thank you for taking care of me, I hope I didn’t cause much trouble over the three days I’ve been here.” Hongjoong turns back towards Mingi, a soft smile spread across his lips. “Thank you for saving me, Song Mingi.”

“We should check on your unmancement progress—”

“Woah woah woah, back the tape up. You _unmanced_ him?” Jongho finally speaks and he seems absolutely livid. His purple eyes intensify in color, almost fierce and intimidating in appearance. “You know the legal repercussions of unmancement yet you ignored the concrete rule of the Kasein and for what? Your own personal Elsa?”

“Since when have we ever cared about the mindless jargon of the Kasein? Besides, there are loopholes, right, Alpha?” Mingi turns his head towards the Mystic dragon who’s listening to the usual bickering with his head down.

Seonghwa nods with a heavy sigh. “Can’t touch a Mystic dragon.”

“Sorry to interrupt,” Hongjoong speaks timidly, quickly gaining the attention of everyone in the room. Yeosang stares with interest; Jongho rolls his eyes, “but what’s a Kasein? And is Mingi going to get in trouble? Wait, is he going to get arrested!? I-I didn’t know unmancement was illegal!” Hongjoong’s breaths begin to stagger, the ice dragon on the brink of hyperventilation.

“Oh great. He brought an Elsa who’s been living under a rock,” Jongho scoffs, his patience for this wayward ice dragon wearing very thin very fast. “What’s next? You bring home a little mermaid you can actually sleep with?”

“If I have to ask any of you three to stop the constant bickering again, you will sleep outside the Thunder House of Egotistic. Have I made myself clear?” The way Seonghwa’s voice is stable and firm despite his inner desires to cut everyone’s heads off and serve them up for dinner made Hongjoong’s spine tingle.

Mingi, Jongho, and Yeosang nod in chagrin, a monotonous “Yes, Seonghwa” slipping from all three of their lips. Hongjoong feels like cowering in a corner from all of this constant arguing. Was it always like this or did today just hold some unexplained exception?

“Well? Are any of you out of your own heads to give our guest a history lesson or do you want the Mystic dragon textbook to over complicate the simple-minded ideas of the Kasein and leave him with more questions than answers?” Seonghwa asks with a fervid tone.

“I volunteer!” Yeosang squeals giddily, raising his hand like he’s in an elementary school class. He tiptoes back over to Hongjoong, the soft clicking of his heeled boots sounding against the hardwood. “A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away—”

“This isn’t a _Star Wars_ rendition, sunshine,” Mingi says matter-of-factly.

Yeosang immaturely sticks his tongue out at Mingi, immediately drawing it back in when he saw Seonghwa watching with those cold, royal purple eyes. “There was a dark time long ago called the Draconian Dark Age.” Yeosang wraps one end of his boa around Hongjoong’s shoulder, the ice dragon finding himself following closer to Yeosang like he was drawn by magnets. “Following these dreaded decades came the War of Darkness which wiped out entire species of dragons. Farewell to my lover of the Siren dragon race, you will always reign in my heart, my vixen prince.”

Jongho not-so-subtly clears his throat, Yeosang throwing a lax wink back towards the purple-scaled dragon. “That war was fought over one-hundred years ago. Entire Thunders became dismantled, dragon cores from dead bodies fell into the wrong hands and,” Yeosang pauses, examining Seonghwa’s expression complacently. “Well, the War of Darkness isn’t exactly my tale to tell. Right, Seonghwa?”

All eyes begin to fall on Seonghwa, who waves Yeosang on to finish the tale. “Soon, after fifty years of the conclusion of that grisly battle, an old hunter began to establish a democracy to keep the creatures who crawl in darkness in line, to guarantee the safety of the mortals. Then came the Kasein, a magical book of conduct that lives and breathes unfair justice, more specifically to dragons.”

“Please leave your political opinions of the Kasein until the completion of the tale, dear Kang Yeosang,” Seonghwa notes.

“My apologies. The Kasein gets my panties in a bunch.” Yeosang shamelessly giggles, wrapping his arm around Hongjoong’s back, his fingers tickled by the white fur of Hongjoong’s winter coat. “Ooh, this is luxuriously soft. Is this mink fur?”

“No. It’s faux,” Hongjoong replies.

Yeosang’s grin grows mischievous, rubbing his arm slowly against Hongjoong’s fluffy sleeve. “He’s environmentally-conscious, too? Can we keep him!? I give him the most angelic makeover! Tease up that hair, touch up those eyelids with some glitter—”

“Yeosang!” They all speak up at once, snapping Yeosang out of his trance of glitz and glamour for the ice dragon tucked into his arm. “Will you just get on with it, Sangie?” Jongho begs, entirely unamused with the yellow-scaled dragon’s short attention span.

Yeosang hisses. “So impatient, the lot of you. Where was I?” He pauses. “Oh, right! So this old hunter began to build his dragon oppressive society by forming a ‘supernatural’ police force of hunters who kept the non-mortals strictly in tight boxes. He named himself as the head hunter as he began to construct his own utopia from the ground up. He goes by the Maddox. Sound familiar?”

“A little. Before I became a dragon, they taught us that the Maddox is society’s cure. He is the antidote for all of the mortals to keep them far away from the paws and claws of the dark creatures. They would hang posters of him on the classroom walls and they always creeped me out. It was like he was… Watching,” Hongjoong answers, fidgeting with the hem of his coat sleeves.

Mingi felt like dry-heaving; just the thought of having to see that sadistic face made him sick to his stomach. “They probably were,” Mingi jokes.

“Correct assessment, your Highness. The Maddox has eyes in every nook and cranny that the Kasein is allowed to touch,” Seonghwa states seriously. Mingi stands there absolutely dumbfounded.

“Okay, thank you for the commentary. I’m continuing,” the yellow-scaled dragon huffs. “Even though the mortals are convinced that the Kasein is to prevent an uprising from _all_ non-mortals, it was more specifically designed to hinder the livelihood of dragons. We’re the most feared species out of all of them. Even though unmancement is technically illegal, there’s loopholes when you’re a member of the prestigious Thunder of Horizon. You are untouchable.”

“So, Mingi won’t get in trouble?” Hongjoong asks in a slightly shaky voice.

“It’s more of a stern talking to then anything serious,” Mingi smiles, those tiny canines poking past his cherry red lips.

Hongjoong clutches his chest dramatically, sighing with relief. “Oh, thank goodness! I was really worried.”

“Not even that surprised, Elsa,” Jongho grumbles, earning a harsh slap on the arm from Mingi. “I mean, yay! You didn’t jeopardize Mingi’s chances at a happy life.”

“That’s enough out of you, Lieutenant,” Seonghwa barks. “Return to your stated post.” Jongho sneers, stomping off into another hallway, a loud slam of a door vibrating the walls of the room. “I do apologize about him. His behavior right now is quite… Off-color, currently.”

“Shall I check on him, Seonghwa?” Yeosang asks, a new breed of concern flickering over his tangerine skin orange eyes.

Seonghwa nods him off, Yeosang bowing before he leaves the room in pursuit of Jongho. “Do what you fit as necessary, Yeosang dear.” All Hongjoong can hear is a clicking of heels that he learns to automatically associate with the snarky, queen bee personality that was Kang Yeosang. Seonghwa clears his throat, redirecting his attention to the Devil’s and ice dragon. “Well, since we can’t seem to act like adults, I shall return to my research in the grand library. Please escort our guest to his room, my king.”  
  
Mingi bows, linking his arm with Hongjoong, bowing his head as they turn to depart the room. They begin to ascend the first flight, taking a left turn at the height of the hall, leading to a pale colored door. “Oh, this isn’t your room. This is just a closet. But I saw you observing the crown.”

There, standing on a metal stand, resting on an opulent red velvet plush pillow behind a smudge-free glass box positioned in a corner under a fluorescent spotlight, was the aforementioned crown that Mingi wore on his head for three days before it was snatched from him. Seeing it from far away didn’t hold the same breath-taking appeal than when Hongjoong was literally inches from it. The scattered signs of burn corrosion mixed with the lusterless gold of the base. Dots and streaks of red made Hongjoong think of the day he never witnessed. Hongjoong was an only child so he had no experience with emotional attachments to siblings and after his parents condemned him for becoming a dragon, he didn’t really have emotional attachments towards anyone. Some of the emeralds and sapphires embedded on the coronet were muted in color because of the thick layers of ash and soot that Mingi never bothered to dust off. Mingi did say that he would never wear that crown again.

“Do you still think about him?” Hongjoong was too busy trying to make out his reflection in one of the opaque jewels to actually turn to Mingi to pose the question.

Mingi hums in thought. “Yeah. When I wake up and when I go to sleep. It always felt surreal to me thinking that I outlived my little brother by entire centuries. Do you have any siblings or family? I’m sure they’re worried about you. Do you need to make any calls?”

“No, I uh… I don’t really have a family… Anymore. They put me in foster care when they got a phone call from the school that their son was a dragon now. And well, dragons and foster care do not mix well. I learned to survive on my own, eventually growing up to bus tables at the Fever and live under their staircase.” It feels weird when Hongjoong smiles after something like that. “I didn’t stay close to anyone, mortal or not.”

“Why do you think we’re the exception?” Mingi asks.

“There’s always this talk that a Thunder is like your second family and I was desperate for a first family.” Hongjoong chuckles, then sighing heavily as his head falls on the Devil’s dragon’s broad shoulder, watching his toes curl in his anxiety, his own personal distraction. “Thunders are havens, free of judgement for being a dragon. I originally had plans to run away when you unmanced me but I didn’t know how physically draining it was.”

“You know that you’re not forced to stay with us, right? It’s only optional,” the redhead explains.

“Well, I mean, I know that now. But I think I want to stay for a bit, you know? I want to feel the love of a makeshift family just for a little bit. I may be a dragon but I still feel emotions that humans feel. I should at least have that on my side.”

“Come on, I should show you your room,” Mingi spoke serenely, his massive palm rubbing tight circles against the fur of Hongjoong’s coat. “Woah, Yeosang was right, this is super soft.”  
  
Hongjoong can’t help the soft titter that leaves him. A sudden tolling of a bell startles the two dragons, Mingi seeming a little more tense than the ice dragon he had cradled against his arm. An aggressive knocking follows after, Seonghwa coming into view downstairs from where they stood at the top of the staircase, throwing a debonair blazer over his button-up, two clean cuts in the fabric at each edge of his spine. Must be for the wings, Hongjoong thought to himself.

“I was pondering if I should’ve offered him a ring on the telephone but obviously the Maddox is laying on top of any opportunity to impound dragons like a dead body,” Seonghwa derides, straightening the folds of his cuffs on his black blazer. A few moments later, a red-in-the-face Jongho and a distressed Yeosang behind him, heels still clicking across the floor. Hongjoong really hoped he would grow used to that. “Keep Hongjoong upstairs. He’ll be the first thing Eden kicks down the door for.”

“Yeah. Don’t want to get Elsa impounded, do we?” Jongho sneers, Seonghwa offering a cold look at his weapons lieutenant.

“I’m sorry but I believe that it is still my policy that you are not permitted to interact with Eden. Return to your stated post, Lieutenant Choi.”

Mingi holds back a snicker, Jongho’s face as red as the Devil’s dragon’s hair. In Jongho’s hissy fit, his dragon core pulsed a royal purple light across his skin, wings unconsciously slicing through the slits of his sweater and twitching fitfully. Hongjoong noticed swirls of elegant constellations peppering the purple skin of his wings, almost lost in the hypnotizing image of Jongho’s winsome night sky. Hongjoong had heard of Lunar dragons like that, how they harbor this mythical black fire that was supposedly trapped in the great depths of the cosmos and how they, quite literally, hold the stars under their wings. The ice dragon had this strange desire to touch it.

“Fine, I’ll be down in the vault,” Jongho snarls, his wings tightening around his body. “Come, Yeosang. Just call me when Eden’s gone. It would be much appreciated.” He pats Seonghwa’s shoulder slowly, turning on his heels to disappear back into the hallway he originally stomped off into. Yeosang took quick steps to follow the Lunar dragon, keeping his eyes glued to the floor.

The sound of an ancient bell tolling travels through the entire house accompanied by more restive door knocking on what sounded like a door knocker. “You would think that with his length of life, he would have fully understood the mere simplistics of a concept such as virtuous patience,” Seonghwa berates, letting his wings gracefully glide through the clean cut slots in the back of his blazer, Hongjoong getting a better look at those ebony things from the top of the staircase. The skin was riddled with intriguingly varying lengths of thin white lines, scars. They didn’t flap at random like Jongho’s did, remaining as still as possible, resembling those of a basic Halloween set of hard plastic and string. Long horns stemmed from the crown of his skull, his left horn missing its point entirely, only half the size of the right one. What kind of things has Seonghwa been up to? He twists the doorknob with a clawed hand, not even bothering to paste on a plastic grin.

“Ah, Eden. To whom do we owe the pleasure?” Seonghwa asks indignantly. Mingi pulls Hongjoong away from view, the ice dragon squatting next to him and watching the interaction through the spaces between the staircase poles like little kids watching their parents ring presents around their Christmas tree trying to meet Saint Nick.

A man with overgrown blonde locks shakes his head with a chortle, pressing his hand against the wall next to the door. He’s accompanied by two other insanely tall men decked out in black, full face masks concealing their real identities. The blonde man that Hongjoong assumed to be Eden was a fashion disaster of leather and buckles in all of the wrong places. “Oh, Seonghwa. You’ve always been quite the charmer.” Eden doesn’t try to hide the crystal clear fact that his smile was a solid fraud.

“Maybe if you lived as long as I have, you’d have a skill like that in your little gun holster,” the Mystic dragon sneers, admiring the spikes that had erupted from his knuckles. “Do you seek to come in, Yonghwan?”

Eden rolls his eyes, keeping his hand around the latch of his holster. He just found himself feeling safer around the oldest dragon when he was merely a centimeter of two from his weapon of choice. “I don’t plan to stay long. Report on the street is that an ice dragon frosted out the Fever last night. He was always unmanced by what this ice dragon’s ex-mancer says is, a Devil’s dragon. Now, personally, I don’t know many Devil’s dragons so—”

“You just presumed that it was Song Mingi, am I correct?”

“Seonghwa—”

“I know the Maddox harbors the callow grudges with me but you know the statement of the Kasein. My dragons cannot be touched by these paper politics. You should know better that you strolling up to this Thunder House just ends in you returning to him with empty hands. Besides, I don’t think you’ve been notified about mancers like that ice dragon’s. You’re willing to let an opprobrious mancer slip through your fingers but when their dragon earns the gumption to hit him back, you clap them with impoundment. Am I proposing an easy meaning to you now, Eden?” Seonghwa’s amber eyes glow passionately, his wings habitually to make himself larger, like a predator sizing up his prey.

“I’m just here to do my job, Hwa,” Eden responds coldly.

“Might I propose a career change then?” he snarkily replies.

“It’s not that simple,” Eden grumbles but Seonghwa’s ears pick it up, of course.

“It is. You’re just too self-reliant on dragon’s blood to keep you breathing to surrender it all.”

The entire room goes silent, eerily silent. Mingi’s eyes widened in astoundment, Hongjoong not clearly understanding what was so upsetting about that statement. Sure, he was taught a little bit about hunters in school but it was always how they were part of the Maddox’s radical resolution. No one would dare ask for the details about what a hunter’s job actually entailed. He decided to ask someone later.

Something in Eden’s persona snapped, roughly taking the Mystic dragon by the crisp collar of his button-up, the heavy grit of his teeth only making Seonghwa smirk. Mingi watches with more alarm flashing in front of his eyes, his core activating his wingspan to spread, the full length knocking Hongjoong over with a bit of commotion that went ignored. “I honestly can’t wait for the day we can impound you. Send your entire Thunder into chaos and watch it crumble from the inside out. And I’ll visit your cell everyday just to laugh at your pitiful state until you finally, _finally_ just die!” There’s a crazed look in Eden’s eyes that doesn’t faze Seonghwa in the slightest.

“That sounds like a wonderful reverie, dear Yonghwan, but until that happens, you’re standing on a Mystic-lead property so I suggest that you and your little entourage depart now before I send Mingi out here to torch you for eternity.” The swirls of darkness swimming in Seonghwa’s golden eyes is a truly hypnotic yet horrifying sight. The two hunters situated at Eden’s sides were practically running for the hills after a heavy threat like that. Eden loses his grip on Seonghwa, attempting to brush off the “dust” on his shoulders. “Shall I tell Lieutenant Choi that you said hi?”

“Just keep the ice dragon out of trouble, especially with all these new Kasein policies sprouting from the ground,” Eden requests.

“Understood, Yonghwan. Good day.” Seonghwa closes the door on Eden, letting his wings fold back into his spine. “Do what you fit as necessary with the particulars that you’ve been provided. I will be retreating to the grand library for the afternoon.” Seonghwa bows deeply, Mingi tilting his head downward slightly. “My king.”

“Come along now, we should get you settled in and check on your unmancement progress,” Mingi says unexpectedly, Hongjoong rising back up after being knocked off his feet from the harsh hit from Mingi’s wingspan. Mingi tucks them back into the slits of his burgundy button-up, brushing off Hongjoong’s shoulders. “I’m sorry about that. It wasn’t my initial intention to thwack you with my wings to make you topple over.” Mingi offers a shy, sharp-toothed smile, small glimmers of light shining in the bold red of his eyes. Surprisingly, he looked beyond cute, adorable even.

“How long are they anyway? I don’t think I’ve ever seen wings like that,” Hongjoong adds, walking up the second flight of stairs when Mingi was ascending in front of him. “I’m a little over eleven feet, the whole short thing and all, I guess.”

“Twenty-five feet of skin, bone, and cartilage. Been through many tribulations these scuffed-up jewels. Not like Alpha’s though,” he hums, holding out his hand for the ice dragon to take it. Hongjoong’s does, lacing his fingers between the gaps. “That’s his story to tell, not mine.”

“Alpha? Is that what you call Seonghwa?” The hallway that they were walking down suddenly stretched longer than Hongjoong remembered. All of the doors were double entrances, the beautiful hickory oak carved with meticulously crafted dragon heads in the frames (was this some sort of narcissism?) with their brass door knobs and silver accents. It was difficult to tell whose room was whose because of all the matching doors but Hongjoong noticed that Mingi left his door open, - the left one - the fury of red spilling across like the open crack like it was some kind of disease. Mingi guided him to the room next to his, taking the doorknobs in his hands and swinging them open dramatically.

“Seonghwa is the leader of this Thunder, basically the Alpha of this pack. If he wishes to refer to me as the king that I was then I’ll call him by the Alpha he is.” Mingi responds, motioning for Hongjoong to enter the room. “This is yours. Yeosang lets us decorate our rooms, just don’t burn your room down or… Frost it? I mean, that wouldn’t hurt, I guess?”

The room is stark white, it’s almost blinding. The walls, the mattress comforters, the floor-length curtains. It felt open, of course, but it felt too sterile and just creepy, like a hospital room. All Hongjoong could see was a blank canvas and he was living for it. “I wouldn’t say frost, per say. What I’m saying is all I can see is a _lot_ of painting potential.”

Mingi chuckles softling, letting his fingers graze across the back of an ivory colored dresser. “Never struck you as the do-it-yourself kind of guy, honestly. Is that why Yeosang was going goo-goo eyes over your fashion sense?”

“Probably. I make a lot of my own clothes. A self-proclaimed upcycler.”

“Surprising that little sunshine found interest in old clothes when he’s always buying new stuff all the time,” Mingi mumbles.

Hongjoong flops down on the double king-size mattress, letting his face bury deep in a feather-down pillow. “Mingi, who was the guy at the door earlier?”

“Kim Yonghwan. Goes by Eden. The head hunter’s top of the line hunter, the first one the Maddox calls for. There’s a lot of bad blood around Seonghwa and any hunter under the Maddox’s thumb.”

“And what was that thing he was saying about dragon blood? Seonghwa said he was self-reliant on it.”

“You really don’t know much about this stuff, do you?” Mingi asks with a chuckle.

Hongjoong sighs quietly, flipping himself on his back to stare up at the flat white ceiling above him, a grand chandelier of crystal chained up overhead. “The schools in foster care only taught the basics: arithmetic, poetry, and that hunters are to be trusted at all costs.” Maybe more recessed lighting would do his new bedroom justice, Hongjoong proposed to himself, running a small hand through his white locks.

Mingi seats himself at the edge of the mattress next to Hongjoong’s legs, the ice dragon tilting his head up slightly until some skin folds down his neck, resulting in that unfortunate double chin. “Are you familiar with familiars? Vampire familiars, to be more specific?” Hongjoong shakes his head. “Basically, they drink vampire blood to heal faster or live longer without ever having to turn. Hunters are like dragon familiars except that unlike vampire familiars, dragon blood for hunters isn’t harvested with consent. It’s often stabbed out of them and it’s usually dragons who roam the streets. Now, not all hunters drink it, especially the ones that are independent from the Maddox’s command but Eden drinks in dangerous amounts to live long enough to witness Seonghwa’s execution. The job of a hunter is a foul game to gamble at but being the hunted… It’s one where you were automatically set up to fail.”

“You said that there were hunters who worked without the Maddox. Are you talking about the hunter ‘gang’, the Seven Seas?” Hongjoong sits on his elbows now, fidgeting with his hands by curling them up in his pristine silk sheets.

“Yeah, they are… How did you know about that?” Mingi questions.

“We were taught about the Seven Seas and how they’re a group of hunters going after the disadvantages of mortals. They were the only group of hunters that we were told not to trust.”

“Your schools clearly don’t draw the right picture. These guys are the only guys that we can trust, especially Zico. He’s saved our lives more than we liked.” Mingi stretches his arms out, a few bones in his shoulders popping satisfyingly. “I really don’t like talking about hunters much but if you have any other questions, I’m always right next door.” Mingi lifts himself up from the bed, making his way out of the door. “I can take you to buy some paint tomorrow as well, if you’d like. I know a few dragon-owned establishments.”

“Wait, Mingi!” Hongjoong yells a little too loudly, holding his hand out as if he could use telekinesis to stop him from leaving. His sleeve had hiked up to brace his elbow, revealing the aggressively pink skin around his forearm, the skin wrinkled in a disgusting way. Mingi noticed the semi-mottled injury almost immediately.

“I almost forgot to check your unmancement progress!” Mingi quickly makes his way back to Hongjoong, taking a rather firm grip of the ice dragon’s arm, humming curiously as he tilts the dragon’s arm during examination. Mingi holds up two fingers to Hongjoong, letting the pads of his fingertips barely graze against the highly sensitive skin. Hongjoong winces like a shot animal, retracting his hand back and cradling it in his chest. Mingi looks at him with sympathetic eyes, slightly droopy. “Hey, you know I’m not gonna hurt you, right? A little cosmetic damage but nothing a witch or warlock can’t fix. I’m sure Alpha has something to numb the pain a little, too.”

There’s a knock against the pillar dividing the double doors, the boy with the boa leaning cooly against the right door jamb. “He’s got good progress after three days. Must be a fast healer,” Yeosang smirks, waltzing his tight-clothes, feathery self over to the two.

“Have you been eavesdropping?” Mingi asks with a nasty bite.

Yeosang clicks his tongue unapprovingly, wagging a scarlet red painted finger under his nose, Hongjoong taking notice of a small sun tattoo inked on his wrist. “Eavesdropping isn’t a word I would keep ensconced in your vocabulary, little devil. I’d rather say that I happened to be in the neighborhood, you know?”

“What do you want, Yeosang?”

Yeosang clears his throat with one too many theatrics, Hongjoong finding confusion with the boa boy’s hair. When they first met a while ago, it was a dirty blonde with dark brown roots exposed but now it was bleached entirely, almost as bright as Hongjoong’s hair. “Seonghwa wants the boy to go on a hunt.”

“Already?”

“Devil, the boy hasn’t eaten for three days… And I don’t think he’s had a _real_ dragon’s meal in his lifetime. Wait, are you born or made? I find it hard to tell with you.” Yeosang’s rubbing Hongjoong’s shoulder when he asks, Mingi’s eye color bleeding into a harsher shade of red.

“I’m made. Put this thing around me when I was eight-years-old,” Hongjoong sighs, a little defeated. “Did you bleach your hair while you were gone or am I just seeing things?”

Yeosang’s palm cradles Hongjoong’s face, thumbs caressing the skin of his cheeks. “Aww, the poor little dumpling,” the boa boy coos. “You must have lived a hard life when you chose this path so early in life.” Mingi rolls his eyes. “Oh, my hair? I’m a Solar dragon. The shades change based on my emotions but mostly my aggression.”

“Which you have plenty of, sunshine,” Mingi scoffs.

“You really are one to talk about anger issues, my little devil,” Yeosang derides, stepping away from Hongjoong to stare eye-to-eye with Mingi. With the heels on, they were leveled off to the same height. Signs of iniquity began to swim in the two feuding dragons’ eyes, not even hesitating to bare sharp-toothed scowls and let animalistic growls rattle their throats.

“Boys!” Seonghwa yells, clapping his hands together like a pet owner would round up dogs. “Do at least attempt to set a reputable paradigm for our ice dragon, please. Our reputation for clawing at each other’s throats tends to be the first topic of conversation so I’m asking you to hold back your grudges until you’ve left Hongjoong on his own.”

The two squabbling dragons nod indifferently, droning the disturbing “Yes, Seonghwa” in their defeat. “Did you ask Yeosang to tell us to go on a hunt?” Mingi asks a little timidly. Hongjoong wraps his arms around Mingi’s bicep, clinging tightly onto the Devil’s dragon.

“Correct assessment, my king. He’s gone a long period of time without proper nourishment so please escort him to the hunting grounds.” He turns to Yeosang and, despite the taller height he had on the Mystic dragon, he could feel himself shrink in on himself until he felt as small as an ant watching the sole of a shoe hover over his tiny body waiting to be squashed. “I believe that you should be fetching copper trinkets for Lieutenant Choi so go return to your allotted task, dear Kang Yeosang.”

Yeosang bows swiftly, muttering a “Yes, Seonghwa” apprehensively as he teeters off in his heels away from the other dragons.

“Will you be joining our hunt, Alpha?” asks Mingi.

Hongjoong didn’t notice the metal studs pressed on Seonghwa’s bottom lip and under it, another ring of steel shining from the sunlight pooling in the cracks of the thin white drapes covering the long-paned windows. How did he also not notice the numerous and diverse amounts of swirls of ink etches on his skin from the neck down to any source of exposed skin, which wasn’t much currently as he swathed in long dark clothes? What was Seonghwa, some kind of edgy punk kid with some several centuries on him? Hongjoong suddenly felt threatened by his towering height and stiff, all-knowing persona.

“I have a few affairs to address but I will reacquaint with you two shortly after. Don’t concern yourself about saving any for me, I will capture my own.”

Mingi bows, Seonghwa humming approvingly. “Understood, Alpha.” Seonghwa leaves the room, Hongjoong looking up at Mingi with curiosity in his blue eyes.

“What exactly do you guys eat around here?” Hongjoong asks.

“You’ll see, dear.”


	3. Chapter 3

“I _hate_ Stadium,” a boy with two-toned hair gripes, sitting on a waiting room chair with his feet on the round table.

Another boy with black and green pie chart hair grumbles. “You don’t even have to go, Wooyoung-ssi. You weren’t even nominated to play.”

A muffled voice of a tall man eating the complimentary lemongrass macarons cuts through, his long, lanky arms wrapping around the shoulders of the two bickering mancers. “Just be grateful that it’s not Tourney! San-i knocked that little mancer kid in the infirmary with a teeny-tiny fear spell.”

“Okay, Yunho-hyung, that’s enough food for you,” Wooyoung says, leaning up to snatch the last two pastries out of Yunho’s massive hands, throwing them haphazardly on the table, the skin of the almond cookies cracking. “Aren’t you banned from Tourney, San-hyung?”

“I wouldn’t say _banned_. I have five Triple X Platinums on my name so there’s no point in throwing me in the bracket just to win my sixth one,” San responds, holding a small rod in his hands the same length and width of a pencil, twirling it lamely with his fingers. He was wearing his usual Stadium/Tourney gear: a ratty grey sweater with holes around the collar, his trusted black sleeved harness bewitched itself with unfiltered dark magic, clean and sleek leather pants which were a pain when he broke a sweat, and classic black dress shoes. There’s a few tattoos peppered on his hands and arms as well as a bull ring piercing hanging from his septum.

Yunho was also nominated to play Stadium this week, which was the mentor versus student training session. He didn’t give himself a tried and true Stadium suit, casually showing up in a flowy white shirt that caught weight at the sleeves with a typical pair of blue jeans and checkered slip-on shoes. He didn’t have piercings like Wooyoung or San, only keeping a set of elaborate piercings on his elven-pointed ears. Today he has a lot of small bells and dangling crosses as well as silver cuffs hanging on the outskirts of his ears, stretched to a soft point because of his elven-mancer halfling blood. He also had the rare elven trait of mood-changing hair, currently resting at a very furious shade of blonde to signify his happiness. “Don’t the mentors get mad at you for using that thing?” Yunho asks, pointing towards the metallic rod that San was spinning around.

“They do but I’d rather not end the show with my magic. Gotta let the foreplay run out a bit,” San snickers, sparks of purple illuminating his fingertips.

“Please never use foreplay in a sentence involving the topic of Stadium ever again,” Wooyoung whines, scratching at his half-bleached scalp in boredom. His hair was two different colors, split cleanly down the middle; black on the left, blonde on the right. His freshly waxed eyebrows, more specifically his right, was punched through with three steel rings, his eye makeup done in silver to highlight it perfectly. He wore oversized graphic T-shirts tucked loosely into clean slacks cinched tightly around his waist with a leather belt with boots to match. There was a thick leather choker wrapped around his neck, zippers etched into the sides of the fabric. His fingers were decked out in chunky rings and random streaks of nail polish; black, of course. He has a black lace folding fan on his belt, his fingers grazing against the heart-shaped points protruding from the long end. “When are they calling for y’all anyway?”

“Not sure,” San responds.

“It could be in half an hour, several hours, half of the day from now—”

“Choi San, please make your way to the standby podium from Stadium evaluation!” the loudspeaker cuts through Yunho’s sentence, a touch of natural brown coloring the roots of his scalp.

“Or, you know, maybe now,” Wooyoung answers, kicking the table back instead of pushing his chair from under the table to stand up. “Let’s go, Yunho-hyung, we’ve got to go to the spectator’s section. Good luck, San-hyung… Not like you need it though,” the half-and-half boy winks, linking arms with Yunho to leave the waiting room.

San shakes his arms out, kicking the push door with the sole of his foot, the roaring cheers of the arena filling up the hallway leading upstairs to the standby podium, two other light magic mancers at the sides of the door. San can see them cowering just from the sight of his dark brown eyed glare, freezing them in their shoes without a single spark of magic crawling from his fingers. They bow rigidly, multiple times. “Hey, relax, guys. I don’t bite.”

San knew his reputation as a member of the Choi family, one of the oldest dark magic users living to this day. They were the most prominent family name in all of Asia and even spoken of in whispers internationally. The Chois sat on unimaginable sums of fame, riches, but most importantly, the most powerful brand of magic of all: dark magic. Just practicing it alone gave San a status that both mortals and non-mortals came to tremble in fear from. At first, San enjoyed the feeling of holding potent power but now he’s bored with the little mind game that his bloodline has imposed on the future kin. Sometimes, he doesn’t want to be the bad guy. Being that he’s trained to eventually train a dragon with a dark core gets old when he beats everyone at Tourney, the student versus student competition that San would obliterate every single time to the extent where they no longer nominated him to play. This was his third Stadium game and he already won Triple X Platinums for the other two, the highest award you could receive from these two gruely competitions. San was tired of winning.

The announcer’s loudspeaker whines with feedback, the two light magic mancers positioned by the double doors flinching from the sudden interruption cutting San’s subconscious thoughts short, planting their palms against their ears. “Sorry about that, folks! Welcome to the third round of morning Stadium! Today, we’re bringing in seven-time Triple X Platinum winner, both in Tourney and his previous Stadium wins, up to the arena! Prepare to quiver in your boots because this mancer has to keep up with his forefathers’ dark sides! Everyone put your hands together for the all-powerful descendant to the darkest magic ever conceived, Choi San!” The announcer draws out San’s full name dramatically, earning an intense eye roll from the dark magic mancer. The family stuff too… Way to put salt on that wound, San thought.

The doors magically swing open with a bit more force than intended, a hunter greeting San on the other side of the door with a cool but familiar look in his eyes. He had an overgrown nest of blonde locks, his hair covering his line of vision like a thin curtain. He was decked out in his usual leather hunter gear with “fashionable” zippers and buckles riddled across his uniform jumpsuit that Wooyoung dumbed down to “an attempt at covering up a heinous eyesore” and left it at that; San had to agree with the light magic mancer on that one. San bows to the blonde civilly, the blonde returning the gesture. “When I saw you on the Stadium line-up this week, I knew that I had to come,” the blonde man grins.

“Nice to see you, too, Eden-hyung,” San smirks, already sick of hearing the word Stadium out of anyone’s mouth for that matter. San always remained on the fence about showing any admiration towards Eden because of his family’s history with him and the Maddox. He scoffs to himself; the Maddox seemed to be everywhere these days with these new Kasein policies being put in effect as soon as they were given birth to the thought. San kept his opinions to himself though as the Choi family was too busy kissing up to the Maddox and his “lovely” Kasein to notice the damage of the community directly involved with dragons. “Wooyoung-ssi is in the stands if that’s who you’re looking for.”

“I wasn’t actually. I know my goals, Choi,” Eden replies, a brash attitude laced in his tone. “I have to talk to you.”

“Boy, did you pick a wrong time to do that,” San states matter-of-factly, shoving past the hunter brusquely as he walked forwards to the rising platform, a dark sense of furor blending with his dark brown eyes with specks of royal purple glittering his irises. “If you’ll excuse me, I have a Triple X Platinum title to win,” San replies coldly, letting magic pool at the pads of his fingertips as the machine whirrs noisily to life, the platform bringing the young dark mancer to the arena floor where he was greeted with the jarring brightness of the sun in his eyes, the boy cupping his hand and holding it above his brow bone, hoping to shield it a little. He hasn’t even started the battle yet and he could already feel beads of sweat trickle down his spine like a leaky faucet. It was a rather uncomfortable feeling, his sweater stuck to his skin like superglue and his hair already losing its volume from all of the humidity his sweat was emitting. The uproarious crowd of spectators chanting his name like some kind of Bloody Mary seance rattles in his eardrums, already earning him a noise-induced headache. He hated Stadium for this reason.

The mentor that San would be competing against was familiar to him. He wasn’t exactly San’s mentor (that was his father’s job since “no puny light magic mancer has the complicated capabilities of teaching my son our brand of magic”) but they had gotten into very well-based and respectful discussions about the Maddox and the Kasein, in private, of course. His name is Park Jinyoung and he was also a part-time member of the Thunder of Eclipse, one of the oldest Thunders that were still active. He had successfully manced the leader, Lim Jaebeom, a born Lunar dragon, several years ago, so he had the traces of dark power swimming in his bloodstream from his dragon’s dark core. Finally, a worthy opponent, San thought to himself. Maybe he’d finally have a reason to actually use more powerful spells instead of his traditional “frozen with fear” spell which was merely child’s play compared to what San was holding back.

“Good morning, Choi San,” Jinyoung smiles genuinely, keeping his hands at his sides, bowing until his body resembled a perfect ninety degree angle a geometry teacher would weep over. It was expected from Jinyoung; always perfect. Perfect and never-changing.

San bows back, unable to contain his sanctimonious smile from creeping on his face. “It’s been too long since we’ve had our sitdowns, Jinyoung-hyung. How’s Jaebeom?” San was sincere with his responses as Jinyoung was the only non-familial mentor that he held up in the highest regard and the older mancer knew it.

The referee arrives balancing a whistle in hand, San taking note that he was a balloon of a man. The ref was a portly man with a not-so-kempt mustache spilling down the corners of his lips into the depths of his chest and spread throughout. Werewolf, San chalked up, only being confirmed by the referee’s semi-forced smile, revealing gnarly-looking canines like a sabertooth tiger. He had this sick desire to touch them. “I assume you two know the rules because of the number of titles you both have.” His voice is gruff but melodic on the ears, something that he wasn’t expecting from someone of this species. “Jinyoung, since you’re the mentor, you decide the weapon standings.”

“I’m not really one to use them often but,” Jinyoung pauses, his hands falling on black handles on either side of his hips sticking out from his belt. He whips them out, revealing two blunt-ended sai with the night sky painted on the handles. They looked like mini pitchforks with those three prongs, shaved down at the end to only stun and not fatally injure, “I noticed that San-i was also carrying.” Jinyoung winks with a sly smirk, the metallic rod in San’s hand suddenly feeling heavier than before but not in a bad way. The audience oos at the interaction, marveling at Jinyoung’s nerve to allow weapons in the arena. Most mancers (mostly the Choi family) looked down at the use of weapons for mancers because their magic should provide enough protection by itself but sometimes San just wanted to put on a show that was worth watching.

“You’ve always had a keen eye when I carry,” San admires, flicking his wrist downward with enough might for the small, dainty little rod that he was twirling around his fingers like a baton girl to extend to a height roughly similar to San’s, each end hulled to a diagonal point. The magic in San’s hand shifts the color from a simple silver to a fanciful canvas with black and purple stripes angled upwards into a clean spiral. The audience reacts agitatedly at the sight of San’s collapsible bo staff; wait until they see Wooyoung’s trusted dual tessen. He spins it around his head flat on his palm apparently bored, taking grip of it with both hands and windmilling it in a criss-cross motion.

Jinyoung’s eyes glitter with excitement at San’s bo staff. “You’ve changed the design since the last time I saw it. I think the other one suits you more, it just looks like you’re carrying a circus ringleader’s baton.”

San looks up and down at his bo staff again, suddenly agreeing with the old mentor, letting his hands tingle with a delicate spark of purple crystal magic, the stripes along the balanced staff melting to be replaced with a pattern of royal purple flames licking up the ends of the staff and moving inward. “Is this better, hyung?” San asks.

Jinyoung nods, whirling one of his sai in the air and catching it behind his back. These two, always dramatic when they unearth their weapons. “Shall we dance, San-i?”

San didn’t need him to ask twice.

***

Wooyoung and Yunho eventually found seats in the crowd, muttering their apologies for abruptly pushing past the sea of legs in front of them. They would have been seated sooner if it weren’t for the half-elf-half light magic mancer who insisted gravely that they take a slight detour to concessions again, Yunho cradling a large bucket of popcorn with artery-clogging amounts of butter in one arm, an insane flurry of sweet treats and his mammoth cup of strawberry soda in the other. He clung onto a packet of red licorice by the teeth, hindering his ability to form a coherent sentence. All Wooyoung bought was an artificial cherry lollipop that savored an atrocious cough syrup which was surprisingly a flavor he could tolerate. It hung from Wooyoung’s lips like an unlit cigarette, sometimes taking the white paper stick with his two fingers, drawing it out just enough so he can suckle at his candy with his lips now stained red from the coloring.

“Great, now all the good seats are gone,” Wooyoung gripes, sitting down at an awkward corner of the arena where the speaker always crackled with feedback and there was always that one guy who would not stop standing up, thus obstructing the entire line of vision. “We got breakfast at the Choi estate an hour and a half ago and you’re already snacking like a teenager in a movie theater.”

“Well at least we didn’t miss the battle!” Yunho comments while obnoxiously crunching on a handful of popcorn.

“Good, or else I would have to cut the points of your ears and sewn them on your chin,” Wooyoung snarls, snatching up the packet of Red Vines that had fallen into Yunho’s lap, removing his lollipop with one hand and ripping the cherry red rope with his teeth.

“Classic Jung Wooyoung, always threatening to slash at people’s throats for that tyrant factor,” a voice snickers, the two mancers heads whipping behind them to see Eden, the Maddox’s most skilled hunter, waving with a few wiggles of his fingers. “Aw, Yunho-ssi, why so blue?” Yunho’s hair currently possessed a very ombre effect of dark brown at the roots, a washed-out blonde spread throughout and sky blue dye coloring the tips.

Wooyoung’s eyes light up with excitement, Yunho soon following suit but more muted, the mancer with half and half hair practically jumping out of his seat to offer a tight hug. “Yonghwan-hyung! You’re here! I thought you had business to take care of at one of the Thunder Houses?” Wooyoung asks, shaking hands with Eden since the seat provided a barrier to a proper embrace.

San enters the Stadium grounds, everyone soon chanting the dark magic mancer’s name like their lives depended on it. Yunho claps enthusiastically next to Wooyoung, joining in on the cheering with his own little adlibs, his favorite one being, “Choi San, the family brawn!” So stupid, Wooyoung often notioned but if it made the halfling keep a smile like _that_ where his cheeks thinned out to fit the stretch of his lips upwards for that hearty laugh, the younger mancer wouldn’t dare to ruin it for him.

“I got it done,” Eden says a little hesitantly but only Yunho noticed. He was too focused on the San versus Park Jinyoung round of Stadium placed in front of him to interrogate the hunter on his tone, especially in front of Wooyoung. Jung Wooyoung revered that hunter like he was a king, always mimicking his movements despite the magic in his blood that chose his pathway of life for him. If the whole mancer thing didn’t work out, he had no equivocation to picking up along the lines of the Maddox’s occupation of hunters. “There’s too much talk in this town to comb through what’s true and what isn’t,” Eden vilifies.

Wooyoung looked like a little kid with curiosity clouding his eyes. “So, is it true? They unmanced a dragon?” By “they”, he meant dragons.

Eden doesn’t nod, only lets out a soft sigh as he leans his elbows on the back of Yunho’s seat who is screaming his head off like a true sports fan. “The specifics are a bit shady but in the short run, yes.”

“They’re disobeying the definitive laws of the Kasein for their own gain of followers? It’s outrageous!”

“Well, what if they unmanced them for good reason?” Yunho suggests.

Eden and Wooyoung turn their heads to Yunho, staring at him in utter disbelief. “Yunho-hyung, you gotta lay off the sugar,” Wooyoung suggests, a loud siren vibrating the speakers of the arena to signal the beginning of the battle. “I’ll knock some sense into you later,” Wooyoung laughs genuinely, Yunho smiling back rather awkwardly.

San flips his bo staff until he has it snugly tucked under his armpit at an angle, the slanted end barely touching the ground. Jinyoung spins his sai fluidly up until he reaches his proper fighting stance, the blades of his chosen weapon pointed towards his own body, crouched low in a position where his rear right leg was bent slightly and his left was as straight as a pin in front of him.

“How much is on our little San-i anyway?” Eden asks, digging around Yunho’s popcorn bucket to steal his own share.

“The standings board says that they’re letting one point nine mil won on San versus the one mil won on Jinyoung,” Wooyoung replies, eyes facing forward to watch the match. “Yunho-hyung here threw seventy-one K in hopes that San does his signature ‘frozen with fear’ spell.”

Yunho’s face turns as red as a tomato, his pointed ears practically lit on fire from embarrassment. The halfling didn’t know exactly what it was but he never felt content around Eden like Wooyoung did. Yunho knew more than well enough that San and Eden had reasonable bad blood in terms of familial ties but Yunho had no reason to outright despise the hunter’s presence but he did so quietly to derail from any altercation if the particular occasion arised. The only factor that the halfling was entirely cognizant on was that they shared polar opposite views on the paper politics of the Kasein and its creator, the Maddox. Maybe it was because of the half-elf prince (who had no real royal status since he was a mix of bloods and not truly purebred) had non-mortal roots outside of his mancing but he didn’t agree with the sudden oppression regulations that were sprouting from the ground like moldy potatoes. Yunho knew that San didn’t either but the Choi family was playing a different set of cards so that the Maddox didn’t attempt to hinder a mancer’s free will of anything within proper legal boundaries. His hair changed from its different rainbow of hues to a stark blonde as he sunk lower into the plastic seat.

“Rookie mistake,” Eden snickers. “You see that mentor down there that he’s up against?” The hunter obviously points to the person across from San obviously. Yunho suddenly felt like a preschooler by the way Eden was talking down on them. How does Wooyoung even idolize this utter prick? “That’s Park Jinyoung, a weapons strategist for the Thunder of Eclipse. He doesn’t have any dark magic in his blood but he’s got the power of a Lunar dragon on his side. He manced the leader of Eclipse, Lim Jaebeom, two weeks after his Adelaide’s Day ceremony. This is no measly light magic mancer that San can shout ‘Boo!’ at and win another title. Jinyoung is _real_ competition.”

“Adelaide’s Day is tomorrow!” Wooyoung gasps, his hand hovering over his mouth in complete shock.

All twenty-one-year-old mancers (or turning twenty-one) have reached what is called “the Age of Mancement” where they must set out on their own with their acquired sum of training and mance a preselected dragon before the next winter solstice. The selection process is honored on Adelaide’s Day, which was named after the first mancer’s daughter, where mancers toss their brand of magic in a bonfire that will judge what specific race of dragon they must mance. If they fail to do it before the winter solstice approaches, they lose their mancer magic forever. Luckily, the bonfire is only bewitched to offer existing races of dragons, like ice or Devil’s or wind. A Mystic hasn’t been cast in fifty years after the Maddox officially rules out that they were one of the extinct breeds following Siren and Tiger dragons.

“Did you actually forget about Adelaide’s Day, Wooyoung-ssi? You do understand the vital meaning of mancing your dragon before your magic hourglass runs out and you’re stripped of it for eternity?” Eden’s tone darkens, notes of demeanment apparent in the hunter’s voice that made Yunho feel second-hand embarrassment for the mancer with half and half hair getting lectured like a kindergartener.

Wooyoung nods quickly to dispel any disbelief that was haunting Eden’s icy glare. “Of course not, Yonghwan-hyung! I’ve just been dealing with some things so I wasn’t really dead set focused on it but I won’t make it again!” It was like Wooyoung was spewing enough muddled nonsense to keep that stupid hunter happy, Yunho said to himself, sighing softly as he stuffs another handful of popcorn into his mouth to stop him from speaking his mind that was festering highly controversial opinions.

“I’m sorry to interrupt your conversation here, Wooyoung-ssi,” Yunho starts, deciding his next words meticulously, turning away from the main focus that was the battle that they were here to spectate to face the hunter and mancer, the hunter drinking something out of a metal thermos, “but we came to watch San-i compete so if you don’t mind, Eden-hyung.”

Eden takes the lip of his cup away from his mouth, a sinister drop of vermillion dripping down the corner of his lips and sliding down to dangle from his chin. Yunho suddenly felt his skin crawl as the hunter wiped away the liquid that had stained his teeth red with the back of his hand. “You’re absolutely right, I’m so sorry, Yunho-ssi.”

Wooyoung shuts his mouth again, taking another lollipop from his pocket and sucking on the nasty cherry flavored thing like his life depended on it.

***

“Gentlemen, are you ready to start?” the referee asks, the rambunctious nature of the crowd beginning to simmer down as the ref spoke into the microphone clipped onto the collar of his comically striped jersey.

The two mancers nod, offering each other cheeky grins as they both began to draw up their magic and let it tingle against their skin. Jinyoung’s sparks of magic came up quickly, stained indigo despite his light magic capabilities, reading as more of a Choi mancer than just a facile light magic user. San’s had a soft royal purple glow, easily drawn up in surprisingly large quantities thanks to his training under his father.

“No hard feelings if I knock you on your back and win my eight Triple X Platinum title, right, Jinyoung-hyung?” San asks teasingly. He honestly didn’t know where the results of this match could stand but he was secretly vouching for the mentor to win. He definitely had no plans to throw the fight entirely, San would just miscalculate a few steps or cast a wrong spell and summon a giant letter B instead of a hive of bees.

Jinyoung chuckles at the proposition with a little more undaunted fire flickering across his dark eyes. San had to admit that he felt a small chill crawl up his spine. “How do you know if _I’m_ not the one getting knocked over and it’s actually _you_? Maybe I would be one of the first light magic mancers to finally beat a Choi after ten hundred centuries of having to live in fear. You ever thought about that factor?” With Jinyoung’s fierce expression and the freezing ice carried throughout his words, San couldn’t tell if Jinyoung was looking for a friendly game of Stadium or if he was seeking revenge for the tormenting caused by his earlier predecessors. For now, all San could do was prepare for the latter and beat the mentor to a pulp without any physical injury.

“Mancers at the ready!” the referee calls, placing a hand in between the two boys who were standing across from each other. San cracks his neck with loud pops, his entire body firming up to tighten up his fighting stance, bringing his bo staff from the right side of his body with fluid motions until it rested horizontally in front of San, hands gripped tightly at the thicker middle. “Ready? Start!”

The entire crowd begins to howl with their cheers as the foghorn to signal the start of the fight vibrates through the walls of the arena. Jinyoung is the first to attack, throwing a baseball-sized orb of magic towards San to hit him square in the chest, the dark magic mancer deflecting it by bringing his staff diagonal against his chest. The spell bewitched on San’s sleeve harness absorbs the magic, storing it in a power supply for later. “Are you serious, hyung?” San asks, windmilling his bo staff for the show factor.

“About what?” Jinyoung responds, charging at San with his left arm above his head, bringing his sai down swiftly to try and inflict damage to San’s shoulder. Once again, San’s bo staff saves him, the dark mancer using his counteracting force to push him back, a small spell laced in the shove that sent Jinyoung flying into a faraway wall, the entire audience wincing. That’s the thing about dark magic; it didn’t matter how tiny the spell is, they all still pack a powerful punch.

Jinyoung brushes the dust off his shoulders as he works his way back up on his feet, more agitated than before. The ground under San’s feet begins to rumble before cracking entirely in between where his feet stood, the dark magic mancer jumping to one of the unsevered pieces of safe ground, a confused look consisting of gaping mouth and cocked eyebrow painted on his face. “What is this about, Park Jinyoung? Do you have some sort of score to settle with me?”

“Not at all, _Choi_ ,” Jinyoung sneered, charging at the dark magic mancer to be met with the same result of San’s powerful defense with his weapon. A glint of metal glitters in Jinyoung’s eyes; not San’s septum piercing but a chunky ring on his index finger carved into a beautiful wolf’s head, the Choi family’s “spirit” animal. It was meant to represent their strength as individuals but also their unspeakable power when they fight as the Choi pack. “That’s quite the ring you got there, San-i,” Jinyoung spat.

“If you’re wondering if it was for sale, it’s not.” San drops down to the floor, wheeling his leg around and catching the weak point of Jinyoung’s stance, hitting him square in the ankle and sending the light magic mancer buckling at the knees and collapsing. “Do you have a problem with me all of a sudden?”

Jinyoung shoots an orb of magic at San’s shoulder, the dark magic mancer not having enough time to shield himself from the attack and began to stagger back from Jinyoung’s outstretched body on the ground. The mentor kicks himself back up on his feet, casting a spell that began to crack the Earth under San’s feet again. “Maybe it isn’t exactly you specifically but you’re a Choi so might as well take it out on you, right?”

Oh… Jinyoung was being serious about his revenge plot.

“Did you honestly expect me to _believe_ that you were on our side?” Jinyoung hissed, aiming another ball of magic at San’s undamaged shoulder. The dark magic mancer swings his bo staff fast enough to take it and absorb it into his sleeve harness. He would have to release that energy sooner rather than later. “After all of the meetings behind closed doors and I come to find out that you’ve been plotting in favor of the Maddox despite your constant reassurances that you were against the Kasein.”

“They’ve been feeding you lies, hyung,” San states firmly, no form of desperation doctored in his words. The ring on his finger begins to burn his flesh a little, the dark magic mancer gritting his teeth to prevent him from wincing in front of the person who was trying to incapacitate him. “I don’t play those kinds of games with the Maddox. I never participated in my parents’ pity party of kissing up for the sake of the existence of mancerhood.

“Your family is a common enemy,” Jinyoung says, spinning one of his sai in his hand before trying to take jabs at San’s stomach, the younger mancer swerving every sudden thrust of his blades which looked sharper than usual. “Might as well take out the strongest piece on the chessboard of life.”

“Are you trying to _kill_ me?” San asks confoundedly.

“No hard feelings, right?” Jinyoung grins fiendishly.

San couldn’t believe this; the mentor that he held on the highest pedestal had stabbed him in the back because of silly assumptions and his family’s blood. He really didn’t want to play this card but he had no choice. He twists the silver ring that was imprinting a burn mark on his finger until blood begins to trickle through the gaps of his fingers and staining his wrist scarlet.

Wooyoung could feel that something was wrong with this round of Stadium. The scent of San’s blood bloomed in his nostrils despite being on the opposite side of the arena and barely in range to sniff out the dark magic mancer. Black veins begin to stretch across the backs of his hands up to his neck, Yunho letting out a gasp of shock at Wooyoung’s sudden new appearance.

“H-He’s summoning you _now_?” Yunho asks hysterically.

“Keep your voice down or you’ll get us caught,” Wooyoung growls in a darker voice that doesn’t sound like his own. Wooyoung can now see, hear, smell, touch, and think San’s surroundings and thoughts. Yunho knew that he shouldn’t have but he took a grip of Wooyoung’s black-veined hand tightly in his, watching cautiously as Woo’s eyes fall shut, the boy’s black eyelashes fanning out across the tips of his cheeks. Eden only watches in wonder; he’d never seen Wooyoung do it in real life, he’d only heard the second-hand accounts.

“Jinyoung has plans to kill San,” Wooyoung reveals.

“W-Well, what’s San-i gonna do?” Yunho persists.

“He’s going to milk the entire power supply of his harness.”

Eden leans in between the two, resting his chin into Wooyoung’s shoulder. “Does someone care to tell me what’s happening here?” He’d heard fragments of the story as to why Wooyoung had these kinds of abilities: he wanted the unbridled power that came with dark magic but in the process, it almost killed him and San had to save him with more dark magic which left a massive stain on Wooyoung’s abilities and left him with the diluted power of light _and_ dark magic. He wasn’t entirely informed on the details though.

“Because San-i saved Wooyoung-ah with _his_ magic, the two are forever linked. When San twists that ring and it draws up blood, it summons the darker ego of Wooyoung which would be a savage and power hungry beast of mass destruction if it weren’t for the leash called San keeping up with him. It helps draw up the darkest bits of power and Wooyoung is a reservoir for San-i’s most powerful magic.”

“So then, what will Wooyoung-ssi do?”

San looks up at Jinyoung, jabbing the point of his bo staff into the mentor’s sternum, Jinyoung finding his chest beginning to constrict blow after blow. “You seriously have the gall to pull a stunt like this during a Stadium round?” San spins his staff hard enough to strike him in the ribs, the mentor yelping out in pain. The diabolic look in Jinyoung’s eyes begins to flicker strangely, almost like he was fighting two different personalities. It doesn’t stop the swirls of purple beginning to form in San’s dark brown iris, aiming a well-placed kick into Jinyoung’s chest, leaving the mentor to fall down on his back. San dug the tip of his bo staff into the meat of Jinyoung’s shoulder, the light magic mancer soon howled in agony. San’s malicious expression never lets up though, pushing down harder until the sharp point breaks the skin and blood sprouts.

“Something’s not right,” Yunho observes. “Jinyoung’s not fighting him.”

Wooyoung hums in confusion next to Yunho, sniffing out San’s surroundings without leaving his seat. “It smells like dark magic, and it’s not San-hyung’s,” Wooyoung points out, opening his eyes quickly to break the connection between him and San. “I think Jinyoung’s been spelled!”

“Finally woken up from your trance, huh, Jinyoung-hyung?” San asks, the light slowly returning to his face. San lifts his bo staff up from Jinyoung’s shoulder, offering his hand to hoist him back up to his feet. Jinyoung takes it, San using his strength to pull him up from the ground. “I think it’s still in you.”

The dubious expression reappears on Jinyoung’s face as he twists San’s arm at what looked like a disgustingly inhumane angle, bending it behind his back until San was stuck in a chicken wing hold. Jinyoung presses one of his sai blades against the base of San’s throat, the dark magic mancer tilting his head upwards to prevent any cut. “You don’t know what you’re talking about, Choi,” Jinyoung snarls, the entire arena of spectators currently on the edge of their seats. “You’ve always thought you were this unstoppable, invincible superhuman just because your magic is just _oh-so_ special and makes you king. All kings meet their end, Choi San, and the Maddox will remain at the top.”

“The Maddox? I thought you didn’t like the Maddox,” San asks in a strained voice. “Your story is falling apart, hyung. Who spelled you?”

Jinyoung begins to emit strangled noises, like he was choking on his air. He loses grip on his sai, the weapon clattering to the ground as he fully lets go of San’s pinned arm. “I haven’t been spelled,” he growls.

“We both know how much of a lie that one is,” San guffaws, turning his body quickly to face a struggling Jinyoung who was clutching a quivering hand to his chest that began to seize up. It didn’t matter what the race of the dragon you manced is…

Light magic mancers _cannot_ handle dark magic.

If you’re looking for an example, just look at Jung Wooyoung who becomes an animal when San summons the darkest side of him.

This sudden nail-biter of life or death leaves the spectators in the stands with more questions than answers, unable to decipher the surreal urgency behind the current situation in the arena. Eden takes another swig of his thermos before commenting between Wooyoung and Yunho in a voice so low only they could hear. “Jinyoung’s not gonna last long if he really has been spelled by dark magic.”

“I gotta get down there!” Wooyoung shouts suddenly, standing up on his feet quicker than a whip.

“Are you insane!?” Yunho shrieks, a few people in the stands turning to the commotion that the two light magic mancers were causing. Yunho yanks on Wooyoung’s arm, urging him to sit back down in his hard, plastic seat. “What exactly are you going to do that won’t get your dual personality condition noticed by members who uphold the Kasein, huh?” For once, the halfling was thinking and he had an _extremely_ valid point.

Wooyoung huffs before sitting back down in his seat, blowing away a strand of blonde hair that teased his eyes. “Okay, I didn’t exactly get that far.”

“Wait… Wooyoung-ssi, how did San-i save you?” Eden asks with motivated curiosity. Yunho could already see the lightbulb lit above the hunter’s head.

“He used dark magic to counteract darker magic!” Yunho exclaims. “We gotta get San-i to use the power supply in his harness, Eden, you’re a bona fide genius!”

“Well, technically _you’re_ the one who figured it out but alright, sure.”

“I think San-hyung had the same idea,” Wooyoung announces, pointing the halfling and the hunter towards the two mancers on the arena floor.

San’s left arm - where he wore the sleeve harness - began to fizzle with those royal purple sparks of magic that San was known for at this point. Unlike most of the time that they had been dueling, San’s eyes carry commiseration, like what he was about to do would be a good thing. Using dark magic against dark magic was always risky business because of many variables but the most prominent two was using the wrong amount and using the wrong spell. It’s all based on estimates and one skewed calculation could make the difference between living to see the next day or finding that your loved ones had to purchase your coffin earlier than they anticipated. San knew how much of a danger it was to save Wooyoung from it but now, the stakes were higher than before… Much higher. There were eyes on him this time, watching his every move so pressure began to beat down on him as hard as the Sun was against his back. “Tell me who spelled you so that I can fix you, hyung.” San approaches him ever so slowly, careful not to seem like a threat to the light magic mancer who was gradually losing himself.

Jinyoung begins choking on words, the mancer coughing enough blood into his hand to appear like a crimson glove and not something so vile and sinister that it made Yunho feel queasy. He looks at San with doe-like eyes like he was _pleading_ for help without words. “S-San-i,” Jinyoung rasps, soon falling to his knees and causing mass chaos in the stands. “T-The Maddox.”

San rushes to the light magic mancer, supporting his back with his hand as the magic in San’s harness starts to ignite without warning. Jinyoung screams as the dark magic of San blankets his entire body and burns him from the inside out. “He knows your dragon, San-i!” Jinyoung yelps before his skin flushes paper white and his body tenses up, the veins in his neck furiously bulging up into the skin.

“M-My dragon?” San asks, absolutely bewildered. He doesn’t get a response. “Hyung?” He begins shaking the limp body’s shoulders erratically. “Jinyoung-hyung? Hey! Park Jinyoung!”

The arena falls into silence as San gets pulled away from the body of Jinyoung, not even sure if he’s alive or dead.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hiiii okay i know it's been a hot minute since i've touched this one but i'm back ~! thank you guys for all of the support that you've shown throughout the few chapters that i've posted !! hope you enjoy

The Devil’s dragon led Hongjoong through the eloquent mansion packed to the brim with all of its shiny bells and whistles to where the back door was. It wasn’t as extravagant as the reptilian heads carved into the heavy oak of their bedroom doors but it still had some delicate gold trim outlining the divots around the cherry wood base, framed with a beautifully tarnished brass doorknob. Everything in this aesthetically-pleasing residence made the ice dragon who was already pretty much down on his luck judging by his occupation as a busboy at the Fever feel even more pauperized than he already was. Mingi opened the door and motioned for him to step outside and Hongjoong swore that he had just walked into a fairytale fantasy.

Outside lay a thick forest of indigenous pine trees and a few imported plants like Spanish moss and the most exquisite flowers that grew like weeds in tightly-trimmed bushes. Smithereens of toadstools and tall-capped mushrooms were smashed into the soft dirt under their toes as faeries darted between the knots of tree bark to travel from place to place around their whimsical forest. Tiny elves ruled their stringy plant kingdoms of moss and monarchies, woodland nymphs prancing in their pretty circles of rocks like wild horses out by their fields. Hongjoong had never seen such beauty captured in this ecosystem amongst the forest that was the Thunder House’s property.

“It’s rather breathtaking,” Hongjoong comments, the soft glimmer of amber fairy lights strung into a canopy high up in the branches reflecting off of his pastel blue eyes. Mingi couldn’t help but giggle at the ice dragon’s displays of child-like wonder.

Mingi hums in agreement, letting the scene soak his memory despite being back in these trees at least twice a day. “Alpha keeps them here because the rule of the Kasein has wreaked havoc amongst their peoples. We’re considered a safe haven of sorts. But, they’re still cautious around us.”

At the sound of Mingi’s voice, the creatures rush to find shelter from the dragons roaming around, the moss elves hiding in their curtains of green while faeries floated to the tallest leaf they could find. The Devil’s dragon sighs sadly, leaning up against an oak tree.

“But to them, a dragon is still a dragon, whether they were made or not,” Mingi says. “I don’t blame them. We damage their relationships with the critters that roam here.”

“How is that?”

“Remember when you asked me what dragons eat a few minutes ago?”

Hongjoong nods.

“We eat deer. Raw deer, fresh kill. Sometimes bone and all if hunger calls for it,” Mingi answers flatly. “It’s because we used to eat humans in the darker times but we sustain ourselves off of more fruitful substitutes.”

Humans. Hongjoong’s stomach turned at that yet he wasn’t sure why. But deer, he could manage despite his previous statement at being “environmentally-conscious” to the frilly boy of feathers named Yeosang. No, that statement was crumpled up and pitched out of the window like a baseball. The thought of the leader with his raven hair and sable scales that flashed a subtle silver at times eating a human leg like it was nothing but a hollow-boned bird who didn’t possess the common decency to wipe the blood that was dripping from his chin made Hongjoong’s legs go wobbly, the Devil’s dragon springing up from his lax position against the tree to catch Hongjoong from collapsing to the ground.

“You alright, Hongjoong?” Mingi asks with heavy amounts of concern weighing down his tone.

The ice dragon nods slowly, straightening his posture while brushing himself off despite not a speck of dirt even touching him (thank you, Song Mingi). “I’m not going to eat a human, am I? I-I don’t think that I could live with that kind of guilt.”

“No, absolutely not! I don’t even think Lieutenant Choi has had one either. I could be wrong though, of course. But no, we live primarily off of deer since it’s the most similar to a dragon’s nutritional necessities that _is not_ a human,” Mingi smiles his sharp-toothed grin.

“So then… How do we eat them?”

“Simple,” Mingi replies as he shakes his hands to reveal crimson-claws like daggers that replaced his fingernails, a flurry of scarlet scales overlaid on the skin of his lower arms. Unlike most dragons, Mingi’s horns - which were similarly curved to those of a demonic source - grew from the temples of his forehead and moved upward which was the opposite of most dragons whose horns would start where the crown of the skull would and form an arc downward. Hongjoong’s horns did the latter, only they were much shorter and almost as thin as icicles with black frostbite tipped at the sharp points. “We hunt.”

“I’ve never hunted before,” Hongjoong confesses, the set of canines that began to outstretch past his gums garbled up the sentence as much as a set of braces would give a prepubescent teenager a slight lisp. Hongjoong hated those teeth with a fiery passion of ten thousand suns. “Is it difficult?”

“Mm, I suppose that it could be if you didn’t know what you were doing,” he responds, ruffling up the fluffy snow white locks of the ice dragon’s hair with a gentle giant grin. “Luckily, I’m here to show you the ropes.”

“How do you guys even get deer up to Seoraksan anyway? That must be hard, right?” Hongjoong’s curiosity was bubbling to a simmer on the stove with all of his questions, comments, and concerns about the alleged art that was dragons hunting deer. Mingi only offered him a soft smile and a subtle jerking of his head, the ice dragon reverting his attention away from Mingi to face… A deer.

“Thank you, Hyojong,” Mingi waves towards a rosy-cheeked blonde nymph with green leaves and flowers braided in the locks of overgrown hair. “Hyunah did a nice job with your hair. Tell her that I said hello.”

The woodland nymph squeaks, rushing off to the deepest part of the forest with his head down.

“That’s Kim Hyojong, our plant boy. He and his partner, Hyunah, are the life force of the forest. If anything happens to either of them, the entire ecosystem surrounding our Thunder House will collapse into a land of death. We defend their home so they provide us our food supply,” Mingi explains thoroughly. Mingi’s claws graze the chin of the deer, the animal showing no resistance to the affections offered by the Devil’s dragon. “All of the deer here are made male by the nymph magic in the forest so you never have to worry about does or fawns.”

Hongjoong nods, beginning to slowly approach the deer that Mingi was gingerly caressing but soon finding that it bolted from the sight of the ice dragon and into the forest. “Wh-What just happened?”

“The animals are not fine tuned to your specific presence.”

“Good evening, Alpha,” Mingi bows, the small ice dragon returning the gesture.

“Evening, your Highness,” Seonghwa replies. “Hongjoong.”

“Hello, Seonghwa.”

The Mystic dragon waves his fingers, black claws glistening under the sunlight breaking through the makeshift canopy of treetops. The ancient dragon was quite the sight for Hongjoong despite having seen him on two separate occasions, still dressed in that silk black shirt with the white Chinese dragons along the delicate fabric, tucked into a clean pair of black slacks with a high waist, cinched uncomfortably tight with a scaled belt. What was that material anyway? To Hongjoong’s fashionably-trained eye, it looked reptilian.

“It seems that your meal has frolicked away in the opposite direction that you had initially intended, my dear,” Seonghwa remarks, a gold chain draped from his fingers. There was a disk dangling at the end made of the same precious metal, the Mystic dragon swinging it up into his palm before pressing on a button that flicked open the top. “Let us move along with the hunt. We’re continuously losing daylight.”

“Is that a pocket watch?” Hongjoong asks, pointing towards the gold disk open in Seonghwa’s clawed hand. Seonghwa clicks the lid closed, slipping it back into his pants pocket. “Correct assessment, Hongjoong. But I would highly suggest that you do not plague yourself with troubles involving a dragon’s novelties and emphasize your general attention to your meal that is deep in the woods.”  
  
“So what’s the best way to catch it then?” the ice dragon asks.

“Mingi, please provide him a lovely visual example,” Seonghwa smiles with his canines pushing against his rosy pink lips. Mingi huffs out his acknowledgement, setting off into the woods, sniffing out the prey’s scent. “You appear as if you have an inquiry a second, dear boy. What swims through that head of yours currently?” Seonghwa tilts his head at the ice dragon, having to cast his gaze down to meet his baby blue eyes but never once looking down on him in a demeaning way like he had with Eden earlier. It felt nice to be on the same level as someone for once, like he wasn’t totally inferior.

“A lot, actually,” the ice dragon chuckles, then sighs. “I guess I’m the kind of person who doesn’t do well with the unexplained. Does that bother you?”

Seonghwa shakes his head with a canine-tipped grin. “You entertain the whimsy of an old soul like mine. I haven’t been peddled with questions like yours since the forties.”

“That’s good, right?”

“Interpret it as you will, Hongjoong. However, I will answer as many as you possess if that aids in your troubles.” Seonghwa reached into his pants pocket, pulling out a clean carton of cigarettes. He picks one out, clamping it between his teeth. “Did you want a smoke as well?”

Hongjoong holds up his hand, denying the offer. “That stuff is bad for you.”  
  
“Not to our species, it is not,” Seonghwa states coldly, letting a small purple flame dance on his thumb until his cigarette was lit. “Dragons have different internal structures than humans do, whether they were born or made, mind you. We are resistant to the chemical factory of substances rolled up in this little stick.” Seonghwa inhales deeply, the smoke emitting from his nostrils.

“Are you a born dragon, Seonghwa?”

“Kang Yeosang and I are the only born dragons in the Thunder of Horizon,” he replies flatly.

“H-How old are you?” Hongjoong can’t believe the mere question escaped him. He was taught when he was young to never ask your elders for their age but after what Mingi said about Seonghwa being the oldest _thing_ there, he had to put some numbers to that ice-eyed face.

“Haven’t you been taught to refrain from inquiring your senior’s age publicly, Kim Hongjoong?” The Mystic dragon’s voice was colder than any flame that Hongjoong’s hands had ever produced. Hongjoong could feel himself shrinking. “Do not trouble yourself with some numerical sum. Just trust Mingi when he says that historians had mistaken me for a pterodactyl and that Socrates and I were not confidants.”

Mingi re-emerges from the trees, panting like a dog. “That stupid tiger ate it!” the Devil’s dragon growls, running a hand through his fiery red locks of hair. Despite his exhausted mannerisms, Mingi still looked like he did when Hongjoong first woke up. Not a single scratch.

“Tiger?” Hongjoong asks, completely perplexed by the announcement. “How can there be a tiger up in Seoraksan?”

“It’s Yeosang’s,” Mingi huffs. “Her name is Princess but she acts more like a peasant with that behavior.”

“Don’t you ever call Princess a peasant!” a voice calls from behind Hongjoong and Seonghwa. It was Yeosang.

Mingi looks like he’s about to torch the entire forest. “Oh, great! More ways to ruin my mood!”

“Boys,” Seonghwa warns.

“I’m going to Hyojong’s for another deer.”

Yeosang smiles mockingly. “Yes, you go do that, dear!”

Mingi disappears into the trees again and the Solar dragon links arms with Hongjoong. The ice dragon soon realizes that Yeosang no longer has his feathery boa. In fact, his outfit has changed entirely since they were inside just meeting each other.

The furiously blonde-haired boy has a purple crop top with willowy lace sleeves that puff at the shoulders, the words “GOOD GIRL” printed in black standing out against his chest. He also has a low-waisted skirt that only wrapped three-quarters around. The skirt’s length reached mid-thigh while the portion that was cut off held up a tightly wrapped garter strap around his thigh with a heart-shaped metal ring. Obviously, Yeosang was one of those less clothes, more skin kinds of people. Yeosang had clipped on a holographic-skinned collar like the ones on button-ups and had strapped on matching holographic high heels, aka his favorite ones. They were a chunky heel but were at least five inches tall. Why would he wear _those_ in the middle of a soft dirt forest? Hongjoong hadn’t the foggiest but he wasn’t in the right place to judge. Yeosang did look really pretty right now.

“How many times do you desire to change, Yeosang?” Seonghwa asks, not even the slightest bit surprised at the blonde’s dramatic antics.

Yeosang coos. “One wardrobe change is not gonna _kill_ you, Hwa. Besides, aren’t the shoes so pretty? Jongho likes them a lot, you know? Good for stepping on _things_ , if you know what I mean.” A little more of Yeosang’s forced wink-wink, nudge-nudge and the joke fell on deaf ears. “Ugh, you guys are no fun.”

“What is your purpose out here, Yeosang?”

“It’s boring inside,” the Solar dragon whines childishly. “And Jongho’s still making bombs and it’s not fun in there so I wanted to see how Jack Frost was doing.” Yeosang’s manicured fingernails tickle Hongjoong’s chin.

“Kim Hongjoong,” the ice dragon corrects.

“Yeah, I know, snowflake,” Yeosang purrs.

Hongjoong rolls his eyes at the overly affectionate Solar dragon, not even trying an attempt at brushing him off. Instead, he tries to derail the conversation. “So, Seonghwa, you said that Jongho… Er, Lieutenant Choi? He’s the weapons person, right?”

“Correct assessment, Hongjoong,” Seonghwa replies shortly.

“Why do you call him ‘Lieutenant’? Is he some sort of soldier?”

Suddenly, Yeosang’s hand shoots up in the air as if he were a student in class wanting to answer the question. “Seonghwa, please, can I tell him Please, please, please!?”

Seonghwa sighs softly, flicking off the ash of his cigarette. “Do what you will, Kang Yeosang.”

“Jongho was a weapons lieutenant who fought in the second Indochina War for the United States Army. He was an officer who had led a small platoon on the frontlines of Hanoi. He was one of the best soldiers the world had ever seen.”

“He wasn’t enlisted for the Korean Army?”

Seonghwa clamps his cigarette between his teeth. “Jongho is a Korean-American. His parents immigrated in the 1940’s and gave birth to him up in New York. When he was about seventeen or eighteen, he enlisted in the US Army, just to avoid the walk around drafts. He wanted it on his own accord, not some government’s.”

Yeosang starts stomping his feet childishly, the point of his heels stabbing into the miry earth. “You said that _I_ could tell his traumatic backstory,” the Solar dragon gripes loudly.

“Well then I suggest that you riposte his queries more fleetingly, Kang Yeosang,” Seonghwa bites back, the intimidating look in his eyes making the boy in high heels cower despite having the obvious height advantage. “Do you wish to recommence or shall I?”

Yeosang opens his mouth to speak but is rendered silent from the sound of a loud roar that shook the birds and faeries out from their trees and the visual of a furious Mingi flapping his wings to survey the entire forest aerially. Fire stained red began to concentrate in his hands, aiming them down towards the forest floor.

“No! You better leave my Princess alone!” Yeosang hisses through sharp teeth, his yellow dragon core pulsing enough light in his skin to let his wings unfurl from his back. They were bright yellow with orange spikes outstretched from the joints. Not as mysterious as Seonghwa’s or as huge as Mingi’s or as beautifully enchanting as Jongho’s but they were still rather nice-looking. The Solar dragon is incredibly light on his feet despite the half-foot-tall high heels strapped to his ankles, breaking past a path of trees to save his beloved pet tiger.

“Does this happen often?” Hongjoong asks.

Seonghwa sighs smoke. “Mingi has an inner grudge with Princess and subjects closely involving Kang Yeosang, as well as Kang Yeosang himself. Yeosang reciprocates those exact feelings, of course.”

“So then they’re just constantly at each other’s throats? What for?”

“Kim Hongjoong, I would advise that you not try to find yourself at the heart of their rather ill feud, both for your safety and my gradually weaning sanity. Thank you.”

Hongjoong unexpectedly didn’t know what to do now. He was rather nervous around Seonghwa, he soon realized. With that edgy yet finely aged persona that he carries alongside his artistic swirls of tattoos and the modern approach of fashion that he adheres to most modestly, the ice dragon couldn’t help but avert as much eye contact as he possibly could from the leader of the Thunder of Horizon.

“You’ve gone quiet, my dear. Have you no more questions?”

“What about Jongho’s story and everything? Well, I mean, how did he end up here if he joined the war?”

Seonghwa looks up at the sky, a dark plume of smoke crawling up from his nostrils. “When Jongho brought his platoon up to the seam of Northern Vietnam to try and win back parts of territory for the Saigon, they never returned to their base. They were captured by Hanoi soldiers holding up their fronts. People who resisted were shot, square in the eyes so no one could live to tell the tale or hobble back to base for reinforcements. They were tossed on a cargo truck with rifles pushed deep against their ribs. Anyone who tried to move a muscle was killed and left on the truck until they reached a body pile. Six bodies stacked up like Jenga blocks, laying side-by-side on dirt fields. It was a truly horrific sight.

“They traveled southwest of Hanoi, about eighteen miles from the Hanoi Hilton to a smaller camp called Farnsworth. He was immediately sent to work where he would torture fellow prisoners of war and officers who tried to resist the Hanoi officers. He lucked out because of his multi-linguistics skills as someone who studied East Asian and Western European languages so he wasn’t flogged as often as most. But to hurt soldiers who were on his side, be it close companions or even complete strangers, it was against his beliefs. So, when he found out that one of his platoon’s recruits had found himself in trouble and Lieutenant Choi refused to shoot him as he was told, he was whipped until he fell to his knees. The luxuries that he had were stripped from him. And a soldier who had escaped one of the POW camps was not happy when they heard it.

“When Jongho went to receive his morning rations, inside of his water cup was a dragon core necklace. A purple, tooth-like charm that had specks like burning stars suspended by a black metal chain. At the bottom of the cup, read a note: ‘If you put this on, you must torch the camp of Farnsworth. I will take no exceptions or I will kill you where you stand.’ I assume you can infer the rest.”

Hongjoong didn’t notice that his mouth was slightly gaping. “So then… Jongho really killed all of those people?”

“What else would you have done in his position as an imprisoned officer?”

Seonghwa had a point; Hongjoong would’ve done the same thing.

“I found Jongho amongst the carnage when I was working on a project in Vietnam. He was a rather elegant sight, I must admit. Black fire poured from his hands like a babbling brook, leaving no Hanoi person alive. In my attire, when Jongho spotted me, he thought that I was one of them.”

Jongho’s stare was sharp, not a single hint of mercy twinkled in his eyes. He raised his clawed hand above his head, accidentally slicing his wrist against the hulled point of his horns but the core glittering on his neck began to sew up the wound, not a single drop of blood in sight. The POW’s deep purple wings stretched wide, the tantalizing view of constellations, stars, and colliding planets on full display for the Mystic dragon. He didn’t even have the decency to properly put on a shirt, only wearing tattered and blood-soaked, thin cloth pants that were barely held up by his hip bones by how huge they were on his frame. He was vacant of shoes.

Seonghwa clicked his tongue disapprovingly. _“Was this your doing, Lunar dragon?”_

 _“You brought it upon yourselves,”_ Jongho hissed through his newly-sharpened canines. _“To enslave_ my _soldiers and_ my _people. You know what they say: ‘An eye for an eye.’”_

_“Well then you must also be aware that a motto like that does nothing. I know from experience.”_

Seonghwa could see fury darkening the beautiful purple hues that haunted Jongho’s eyes. For some reason, the Mystic had obviously touched a nerve or two with the truth and Jongho was not too kind to let Seonghwa speak the rest of his sentiment. _“I’ve heard enough of your bullshit! I will kill you as you have killed my comrades!”_

Jongho hurled his black fireball toward Seonghwa, the Mystic dragon making a simple side step and watched a tree catch fire behind him. Seonghwa rolls his amber eyes. _“Weren’t you also taught not to play with fire, Lunar dragon?”_

 _“Don’t act like you know me, you bastard! I could roast you like a fucking marshmallow if you keep up with that damn mouth of yours.”_ He threw two more, mysteriously missing Seonghwa every time. Another tree caught fire as well as a pile of dead bodies like the ones Jongho saw from the cargo trucks when they first captured him. The scent of rotten flesh had haunted the air, the newly-made Lunar dragon resisting the urge to gag.

Seonghwa can only crack a smile. He doesn’t expose a canine grin or scales that run up his salty honey skin or those knuckle spikes most of his fighting pride was rested on. It was almost mesmerizing how human a dragon could look if they merely tried hard enough. _“Such a mouth for a young one like you. Also, don’t be wasting your energy on an aged creature like me. I may have many rings on the inside but I’m still a comely tree.”_

_“Bullshit! You don’t look old at all!”_

He sighed, disappointed. _“In an age where dragons, vampires, sirens and witches, mancers and mages exist, I’m rather astounded that you still believe in that construct of age.”_

 _“Who are you!? A Hanoi soldier who plans to shoot me!?”_ His claws take a grip of his pulsing dragon core where he held it up towards Seonghwa’s line of vision. _“This thing’s gonna save me for twenty years! Twenty years where I’ll be standing on fertilized soil made from your bones!”_ Jongho shot an unexpected blaze at Seonghwa’s chest that hit him square in the chest where his dragon core was positioned.

 _“My most valuable suggestion to you is that you pray to any religious deities that you believe in and if the answer to that is of atheism then I suggest that you prepare yourself and watch what happens next.”_ Seonghwa’s fingertips curled with black claws stretched past his fingernails. Purple flames rose from his palms tipped as black as his newly-forming scales that laid across the skin of his arms and neck. They began to shine a pretty silver, the tips of his ebony locks the same color. Wings unwrapped from his back through slits in his thin sweater and busted-up horns cracked through his skull to curl along the seam.

Then, Seonghwa aimed the blaze that was nestled against his palm at the ground under Jongho’s feet, trapping the two in a slowly rowing wall of purple inferno. Jongho couldn’t understand it.

 _“Impossible,”_ he said under his breath but Seonghwa’s finely-tuned ears _always_ picked it up.

 _“I find it rather bold of you to doubt the innate power of a Mystic dragon. But, you probably don’t see many who roam, do you?”_ Seonghwa tilted his head when he asked the question.

Jongho just stared with his mouth gaping. He screwed it up tight when he noticed that his jaw dropped. _“You’re a dragon?”_

 _“Well, did you not notice my core?”_ Seonghwa opened his suit jacket slightly even though it wasn’t necessary. It dangled from a gold chain and stopped at the tip of his sternum. _“For a soldier, you’re not entirely attentive.”_

 _“And what military bearing do you possess exactly?”_ Jongho hissed.

Seonghwa chuckled softly, reaching into his white button-up and resurfaced with a jangling chain of silver dog tags. He tossed them to the Lunar dragon; Jongho caught them. His name is Park Seonghwa but his birthday is marked as negative. His age was so old, that even his tags couldn’t say. But the ranking caught his eye.

Park Seonghwa. Negative day. Delta Platoon. Second Captain, Naval.

He outranked Jongho.

 _“So are you going to come with us…”_ He left a long pause to let Jongho fill in the blank with his name.

Jongho’s posture straightened, his arm shooting up to salute the Mystic. _“Lieutenant Choi Jongho, Captain.”_

_“Oh, please. That life is far behind me. I’m the leader of a Thunder now and you look like a steely recruit. Now, I shall ask again…_

_“Will you join us, Lieutenant Choi?”_

“I didn’t know you were a naval captain,” Hongjoong comments, pulling Seonghwa from any other thought that his ancient brain could muster.

Seonghwa sighs, dropping his half-finished cigarette and squashing it out with the tip of his toe. “There are a multitude of enigmas about me that you are unaware of. We haven’t exactly been acquainted for a long period of time as the other dragons in the Thunder so you’ll be treading water in the dark at certain places in time. As you know not even a small dent of my history, I know very little about you, dear.”

“Oh, um…” Hongjoong thinks back on what he told Mingi. He was made at a very young age to where his parents ultimately abandoned him. School was always one-sided in beliefs and how the foster care system was tossed in thought the same. His joke at the Fever as a table busser and his makeshift home under the staircase until that mancer stripped him of all of it. The abuse that came with the mancer. The life-saving day at the Fever where a Devil’s and Mystic dragon helped him out of it. Seonghwa listened to his tale attentively.

“So, have you never had higher education?” the Mystic asks.

Hongjoong laughs at that. “I barely had the sanity to finish high school. Besides, mortals don’t like dragons in art schools.” The ice dragon shoves his hands in his pockets with a huff.

“Art school? Do you draw?”

“I paint.”

Seonghwa offers a side smile. “You’ll have to show me sometime, dear. Maybe my good friend Van Gogh will turn in his grave from your talent.”

Blush begins to creep across Hongjoong’s pasty cheeks. Seonghwa admired the flush of bright color on his dreary skin.

An ear-splitting screech makes Hongjoong wince. The ice dragon couldn’t decipher the content but Seonghwa’s old ears could.

“My shoes!” Yeosang howled. Trees begin to rustle and the two dragons re-emerge, Mingi with a sharp-toothed grin and Yeosang’s hair so blonde it should’ve been considered white. “That bitch got blood on my shoes!”

“Language, Kang Yeosang,” the Mystic reminded him.

Yeosang kicked his foot in front of Seonghwa, his five inch heel hovering over the point of his nose. The man in the skirt really had no shame. Hongjoong turned away before he could see what was under it. “You see this shit? Blood on my favorite heels!”

“Yeosang, I’m not aware of what I’m supposed to be looking for,” Seonghwa adds, tilting his head around the shoe in front of him.

“Ugh, you tasteless cretins!” Yeosang sneers, bringing his foot back down on the ground.

Mingi rolls his eyes. “There was one drop and it was Princess’s.”

“She gets a pardon!”

“So now you’re just mad because you wanna be mad?”

Seonghwa’s phone pings in his pocket. He ignores it.

“I wouldn’t have had to save Princess if you didn’t go after her in the first place,” the Solar dragon pouts, his wings twitching fitfully.

“Well then keep _your_ tiger out of _our_ hunting territory. Capice?” Mingi turns to Seonghwa. “That’s British, right?”

Seonghwa sighs in chagrin, his fingers pinching the bridge of his nose at the face that he had to deal with these imbeciles. “Your Highness, that wasn’t even close.”

“British? Why would you go for something British?” Hongjoong asks with a confused tilt of his head. He always seemed to have a question.

Yeosang pushes himself in front of Mingi, not even caring if he fell to the ground or not (he didn’t). The light on Yeosang’s tomato red face had soon returned, as well as that cocky grin he could never make a whole day without. “It’s because I was born in England! Came from a yellow-scaled egg in the 1500s and have been living my dreams ever since.”

“Didn’t know your dreams involved acting like a prick because of your own entitlement and getting fucked against a wall every Tuesday night in your fishnets,” Mingi grumbles.

“Hey!” Yeosang turns on his heel, pointing a finger at him. “That was way out of line!”

Mingi chuckles shamelessly. “I’m very sorry that the truth offends you, sunshine.”

Another mechanical ping comes from the direction of Seonghwa. He rolls his eyes, pulling his non-cased phone out of his pocket. “Lieutenant Choi states, and I quote, ‘If you don’t get those two numbskulls to shut the… Ahem, _frick_ up, I’ll drive a pipe bomb down both of their throats. I can hear that married couple… er, complaining from the basement.”

Mingi leans towards Hongjoong’s ear. “Alpha only curses when he’s really upset but Jongho has a military mouth so Alpha does a lot of censoring for him.”

“If you want to avoid the conversation for a while, you can buy me the paints for my room. Pick what you think looks good and I'll worry about the rest,” Hongjoong suggests.

Mingi nods. “For the sake of the people that are less intellectually-challenged than some,” Mingi looks dead-set into Yeosang’s tangerine eyes, “I have some errands anyway.” He gives a short bow towards Seonghwa. “Alpha.”

Seonghwa repays the gesture. “Your Highness.”

Yeosang waves childishly. “Hope you get hit by a car!”

“Hope you get bitten by your fucking tiger!” Mingi chirps back before he goes back in the house with the slam of the door. Yeosang had already thought of a comeback but Mingi already had the last laugh by fleeing the scene and adding more fuel to the fire.

“Must you two always lock horns every chance you get? It is rather uncivil, especially of your nature, Yeosang,” the Mystic dragon says as he offers his harshest side glare.

Yeosang scoffs with a well-manicured hand press against his own chest. “You’re always taking his side. That hurts. We’re _born_ dragons… we shouldn’t be on opposite sides of the checkerboard.”

“Yeosang, dear, I don’t think you can see the board.”

Even Hongjoong made a soft hiss at that, like when a student gets in trouble and his entire class “ooo”s him for unnecessary dramatics. Yeosang bites back a snarl towards the ice dragon. He doesn’t know any better.

“Sh-Shouldn’t you be fetching that deer from Hyojong’s, Hwa?” the dragon in the skirt remarks, cheeks flushed an aggressive shade of pink. He was never one to be made a laughing stock of so he was on the precipice of an outburst.

Seonghwa nods with a snarky smirk. The pride of the Mystic dragon was apparent in that smartass expression on the sable-scaled dragon’s face. “I won’t kill him for you, Hongjoong, but I will draw him closer to you, just to aid you a little. Understood, dear?”

Hongjoong nods. Seonghwa disappears into the canopy of trees behind him, the same one that Mingi had come in and out of.

“So, are you really British, Yeosang?” It was still a pressing issue to Hongjoong, like it was some sort of secret that he wanted in on. The absence of Seonghwa who seemed to provide as Yeosang’s leash. Hopefully, Yeosang was more tamed without the Mystic dragon constantly yanking him off of someone’s leg.

Yeosang bows his head a little with a hefty laugh. “Well, long live the Queen.” Hongjoong noticed that the Solar dragon had picked up the existing hem of his skirt in a cute little curtsy that women would offer. “I lived in the mother country long enough in the 1900’s.”

“Why’d you leave? Did you move straight to Korea?” Despite all of the questions that the ice dragon had posed for almost every dragon that stood on the property, they were asked with curiosity beaming across his face. He had always been the kind of kid who wanted to know everything about anything. Plus, if he were to be around these members of the Thunder, then he needed a bit of background information, just to figure out what tended to be more sensitive around the other dragons.

“Curious little snowflake, aren’t you?” Yeosang coos with a slightly devious smirk.

“I um…” Hongjoong clears his throat. “If you don’t mind.”

The Solar dragon offers an amused giggle. “I hopped around for a bit along the stretch of Europe. Brought unbridled chaos, fury, and mischief along with me, of course. It tends to be a magnetic facet of my personality. But, Seonghwa and Mingi found me in New York around the twenties.”

“America’s New York?” Hongjoong had never been outside of South Korea.

Yeosang rolls his eyes with a sharp grin. “Well, there is only one _real_ New York, doll.”

“You’ve aged well… for someone from the 1500’s, I mean.” That tended to be one of Hongjoong’s issues; he was one to speak whatever was on his mind as soon as it came to him. That led to a lot of popped mouths from his elders and a massive loss of any existing friends.

Yeosang, however, does not pop his mouth or curse him out for uttering such a thing. Instead, his smile stretches wider than Hongjoong had ever seen in his time at the Thunder House of Horizon. “Ugh, you really are the sweetest thing. I like you!”

Hongjoong grows slightly flustered, a soft pink coloring his usually pale snow skin. “Oh, um… th-thank… you?”

“But… if you were wondering why I flew from England across the Pacific Ocean, I had gotten into some trouble and I’ve been unofficially exiled from the mother country.”

What exactly could Yeosang have done to ultimately piss off the then-Queen of England?

“Ever heard of Jack the Ripper?” Yeosang offers the cruelest laugh and Hongjoong’s eyes blow wide in shock.

There was no way he was directly involved with _the_ Jack the Ripper… right?

The sudden sound of a twig snapping breaks Yeosang’s attention from Hongjoong to the origin of the disruption of their conversation. A deer, slightly bigger than the one that Yeosang’s pet tiger had allegedly killed (according to Mingi), had innocently pushed past a curtain of leaves with his antlers. The ice dragon pinched his abdomen to stop it from grumbling and scaring him off… again.

“Oo,” Yeosang starts clapping his hands giddily. “Daddy’s home!”

Seonghwa follows behind the deer, picking a green leaf out of his black locks. “Kang Yeosang, we've been over that salacious nickname.” Seonghwa’s hand had splotches of a sticky red liquid that smelled of blood. Hongjoong’s stomach had turned again.

“Oh right.” The Solar dragon drapes an arm around the Thunder leader’s shoulders. “Does it bother you, Alpha?” Yeosang purrs in a… certain manner.

Seonghwa’s only reaction is a casual sigh, gently removing the contact that Yeosang had established around his upper body. “Do be appreciative that Mingi was not around to witness you saying that, Yeosang. He does not take rather kindly to your contemptuous tone involving my alias.”

“Oh, you know he just needs something in his mouth to shut him up… if you know what I—”

“Kang Yeosang, get your ass back in here and help with the fucking soldering gun or your ass is grass and I’m the motherfucking lawn mower!” A harsh voice cuts through Yeosang’s innuendo, also scaring off Hongjoong’s meal… again. All three dragons focus their attention on a purple-scaled Jongho standing in the back doorway, Yeosang immediately flushed of color.

Whatever highly flamboyant and flirtatious personality Yeosang had been keeping up with was immediately squashed by the Lunar dragon barking orders. The Solar dragon bites back any remark that was usually his attitude, making his way back to where Jongho was standing and waiting for him. Hongjoong suddenly took note of Yeosang had somewhat lost his balance on those holographic heels and almost ate dirt. His wings had flapped aggressively enough to catch him before he did. Mingi probably would’ve laughed hysterically, Hongjoong had thought.

“I-If you’ll excuse me.” Yeosang’s voice was barely over a mumble. Hongjoong felt somewhat sorry for the Solar dragon. He wasn’t necessarily sure why, but he did.

“Yes. I’ll help Hongjoong here with his meal.” Seonghwa nods his head as Yeosang trudges back to the house. When the Solar dragon finally makes it back inside, Jongho hits his bottom - the other dragon yelping - before he slams the door.

“I guess we gotta go get that deer, huh?” Hongjoong offers a sheepish smile.

“Well, it would help you accompany yourself to the ins and outs of our hunting territory, don’t you think, dear?” Seonghwa’s expression was lukewarm at best. He only had a half-smile curling up the corner of his lip. All more reasons why Hongjoong practically cowered from the much older Mystic dragon. However, there was nothing particularly hostile about Seonghwa directly but when the two were left alone like they were now, some of the worst case scenarios had come to mind. “Come along now. I’m sure Princess is not properly restrained from feeding on your second deer.”

Hongjoong is quick to follow Seonghwa, who holds up the stringy line of leaves that separates the belly of the forest from the rest of society. The ice dragon mutters his gratitude and then proceeds to drop his mouth as he takes everything in absolute awe. He was utterly impressed by the walk up to the forest that Mingi had escorted him to but that little entrance hardly compared to what laid deeper inside.

Lightning bugs and fire moths (they made the light that attracts mundane moths) fluttered overhead, a few curious ones hovering closely to tickle at Hongjoong’s cheeks. He giggles like a little kid. Faeries and elves and amaroks and nymphs functioned in their little communities, Hongjoong watching where he was stepping so that he didn’t accidentally squash a mushroom or, wore, an elf who occupied said mushroom. Magical trees of twenty colors towered overhead, long bridges connecting decently-sized bungalows that held nymphs of the forest were built high in the treetops where ground dwellers could not pester them. Massive birds and bumblebees as big as elephants droned low as they suckled on flowers the size of dinner plates.

It was like some sort of fever dream on this side of the canopy.

“Have you never seen an enchanted forest before?” Seonghwa asks as he examines Hongjoong’s whimsical mien. It was almost like he had never truly seen magic in one of its most natural habitats.

Hongjoong shakes his head slowly, still trying to take everything in at once. “Magic, basically anything that defied humans or physics and science, wasn’t really showcased like this. I was always taught that magic would soon lead to the world’s downfall. That anyone who wasn’t human or was even tied to magic by any sort of lineage was automatically a savage, whether they were practicing light or dark magic.”

“Did you give any credence to the claims?”

“Well…” Hongjoong felt that he needed to tread lightly in regards to this topic. Would he be viewed as some sort of hypocrite if he told Seonghwa the truth? “When I was manced before you and Mingi saved me, I… believed that. That people with magic were only for themselves. Magic… Well, I thought it made anyone who possessed it a horrendous person. A light magic mancer who abused ‘his’ ice dragon… That was evidence enough for me.”  
  
Seonghwa hums with a firm nod of his head. “So why change your mind now? Dragons aren’t magic so it’s not like you have solid evidence to either condemn or redeem people who were born or provided magic.”

Seonghwa… Well, he was right. Hongjoong predicted that this would be a common occurrence if he further stayed with the Thunder. One of the bumblebees drones lazily past Hongjoong. “I’m not entirely sure. Consider it… gut feeling, I suppose.”

“Magic is,” Seonghwa starts with a sigh, “a highly misconstrued idea that is beyond mutual understanding. A brand of magic that a creature has been endowed with doesn’t make who the creature is as its own being. You were ensnared by a horrid light magic mancer who just happened to be overtaken by vile and disgusting thoughts of violence. What he had inflicted upon you doesn’t come from every light magic mancer in existence. Same with dark magic, too. Magic isn’t the supporting pillar of any creature’s personality.”

“Do you speak from experience?” Hongjoong wanted to slap himself for saying that out loud. “That’s… a stupid question to someone as old as you, isn’t it?”

“Hongjoong, dear, a stupid question is asked by ignorant people. A question in general is asked by people asking to learn more.” It was like being lectured by a philosophy major. Honestly, Hongjoong wouldn’t have been surprised if he did have a degree in that field. “In my personal belief, I don’t like to think of experience that makes me a superior, all-knowing being. It’s what you choose to do with the knowledge of your options to deal with the experience you are dealing with. When someone with magic commits a heinous crime like, in your case, continued abuse of a mancer and a manced dragon, everyone’s first impression is that they are of dark magic lineage which is indeed a falsehood. Magic is not personality; it’s just magic.”

Seeing the reflecting look on Seonghwa’s face was, admittingly, almost mesmerizing. Well, at least it was to Hongjoong. It was almost like a mentor offering his most deeply-rooted counseling to his star pupil and for once, Hongjoong could understand his reasoning.

_Magic is not personality; it’s just magic._

That’s all magic ever was to dragons. Sure, mancements involved magic and they were often dictated by the existence of it in their surroundings but it was treated like some sort of minor inconvenience to Seonghwa. After all, Seonghwa had properly established his position as a protector back at the Fever three nights ago, almost bleeding into four. Seonghwa was a creature who stood on the highest pillar, overlooking magic like it was nothing.

After all, it’s just magic.

“So, what made you want to create a Thunder?” Hongjoong asks, his little cauldron of inquisitiveness almost bubbling over.

Seonghwa used to answer this question often, especially with the number of tabloids and news outlets that practically copied and pasted the most basic, low-bearing fruit types of questions when all four main Thunders exited their Thunder Houses after long meetings discussing the Maddox and the Kasein. “It’s quite simple, really. I wasn’t content on my lonesome.”

Wait, that was it? There wasn’t some emotionally crippling backstory diving deep into mental trauma or loss or a sense of need? There was just that Lehmann’s answer of “I was lonely.” Hongjoong almost pouted at his answer, his Mount Everest-high expectations for a meaty backstory now thoroughly squashed like a pancake.

“You seem dismayed regarding my reply. Have I unknowingly affronted you in some way?” Seonghwa turns towards Hongjoong with an expression shifting into genuine concern.

“Well, it’s just that…” Hongjoong takes a pause, noticing how his voice was teetering on the edge of that of a whiny toddler’s beginning stages of a tantrum. “I think I’m just… I thought you would fit in that ‘lone wolf’ box. You seem like you prefer to keep to yourself.”

“I’ll be upfront, some sections of my lifespan I do happen to keep tucked away for the safety of others. No matter how many reporters knock on my door asking about the War of Darkness or the Draconian Dark Age, I will refuse them of my presence. But that does not necessarily rule out the possibilities of physical company as an entire whole.” Seonghwa hums in thought for a moment. “I tend to be critically selective of said physical company.”  
  
Hongjoong remembered Yeosang had talked about the War of Darkness when he told him about the oppressive ways of the Maddox, same with that whole dark age, too. But he was kept completely in the dark over the details around it. “Would you tell me about the dark age and the war?”  
  
“Do you work for Hankook Ilbo or MTBC?”

Hongjoong holds back a snort. “No.”

“What do you want to know?”

Was Seonghwa actually going to give Hongjoong, an ice dragon that they basically picked off the street, all of the answers that he had had denied every other person? “I… honestly don’t know. It’s something I keep hearing about in hushed whispers around you four. Especially Mingi and Yeosang. Is there like a wrap up of the dark age and the war?”

Seonghwa lets out a hearty laugh at Hongjoong’s question. “You’re requesting a tall order, Hongjoong. That’s a little more than one hundred years of magic’s political history compressed with a hydraulic press into a bite-sized piece.”

“Is it too much for you? I don’t mean to put a lot on you.” Was Hongjoong stepping on toes with a hefty request like this?

Seonghwa only laughs. He doesn’t come off as demeaning or cruel, however. It’s rather light-hearted. “Let’s hope that I don’t stultify you of such a dark yet rich history.”

“Even in the beginning of time where mortals were first swinging their wooden clubs like wreckless barbarians, dragons laid eggs and hatchlings would be born into the world with judgemental eyes boring holes in the backs of their skulls. It didn’t matter that we had prospered more fruitfully than the cavemen and that we were the ones who pushed them in the finite direction regarding the ‘discovery’” Seonghwa used air quotes to further emphasize his point, “of fire, we were the enemy. We’ve _always_ been the one with massive targets on our backs, unable to relieve ourselves of the prejudice seared on our wings. Didn’t matter whether or not you were good or bad, all dragons are forever primitive. Murderers. Savages.”

_Savages._

Hongjoong could see why Seonghwa’s stance on the whole “it’s just magic” was what it was.

Seonghwa and all dragons coming before and after him were automatically labeled as beasts seeking flesh and blood just because they couldn’t harbor a mortal’s humanity.

The ice dragon’s stomach turns, a loud grumble making the Mystic dragon’s concern peak. “I had almost neglected your increasing hunger. I believe your meal has fled up to the highest part of the mountain so I will hunt for you, if you do not mind of course.” He sighs. “I’m sure you must be starving because of my ignorance to your needs.”

“No, no, I—Well, I wouldn’t be so harsh to call it ignorance. We got a little distracted with these kinds of backstories, you know?” Hongjoong laughs to alleviate what he perceived as Seonghwa’s guilt.

“You’re a kind soul, Hongjoong,” the Mystic remarks with a soft, yet noticeable, smile. “I shall call for him and teach you how to… neutralize them.” Hongjoong’s mouth felt dry when he knew that the lead dragon was just trying to sugarcoat it a little bit. He couldn’t tell if it helped the situation of his anxiety that came with eating this animal to satiate that gnawing pain in his gut or it made it incredibly worse.

Seonghwa clicks his tongue in a peculiar way. He continues that three times. “Does it take long?” Hongjoong asks. “I mean, for the deer to come?”

“We have a bit of time before he makes his way down the mountain. Would you like me to continue the story of the dark age, by any chance? I did warn you that I might bore you.” Hongjoong soon began to notice that the longer Seonghwa was around him, the more he was loosening up in terms of speech. The ice dragon felt like he was associating with an old acquaintance of his. It was comforting, being that he never really had close friends.

Hongjoong nods with a grin. “It takes a lot to bore me. I’m one of those ‘interested in everything’ types of kids.”

Seonghwa chuckles genuinely. He hasn’t smiled like that in what felt like actual centuries. Hongjoong made him feel so carefree. “You amuse me highly. Thank you for… entertaining my psyche.”

“Just ways to pass the time, I suppose. And besides, you all have such a colorful history. It’s appealing to the ears, if you really think about it.”

“As I was speaking on, dragons were viewed as savages. And well, we still are, no matter how kept together we could keep ourselves. Thunders are viewed as anti-mortal cults instead of dragon safe havens. But, there were a specific group of dragons that were mortally feared, I’m in that small subset… We’re dark dragons, only manceable by dark magic mancers.”  
  
Blood. Lunar. Tiger. Devil’s. Siren. And the strongest of all of them… Mystic.

That was Seonghwa’s breed.

“I thought that Mystics were extinct. Same with Tiger and Siren. That’s what every history book says.

Seonghwa grins. “I’ll get to that.”

“A little more than one hundred years ago, a rather large influx of dark dragons were being laid at an impossibly rapid rate. For every light dragon, there were five dark ones right in front of them. The mortals saw this as a massive threat, seeing that there weren’t enough dark magic mancers to mance them all. So, smaller attacks, like raiding dragon-run businesses or the exclusion of dragons from neighborly activities, soon ensued. With that, it soon escalated to murder and robbery and torture. Kidnappings rose to an unspeakable degree and almost never held ransom. If they did, it was amounts no even the most aristocratic dragons could ever fork over. At themes in the present, it’s still quite a rampant happening.

“So, the main Thunders of the time, Eclipse, Egotistic, and Horizon, decided to call for a revolution, a way to broadcast to the non-dragon, non-magic public that we weren’t who they were making them out to be.” It was rather strange hearing Seonghwa talk about his Thunder in the third person, like he was merely a bystander. “At first, the dark age was labelled as such because of the number of dark eggs that were hatching but found its new meaning with the destruction of them all.”

Hongjoong could only imagine the things that Seonghwa and the rest of his small Thunder had seen. Although, the things that were happening today seemed bad enough.

Dragons would always be assumed to be the enemy. Absolute savages.

“But, this revolution was twisted every which way until you couldn’t tell what it was anymore. They call it ‘the War of Darkness’ but I prefer the second episode that came with the Draconian Dark Age. Thousands of dark and light dragons were killed in break-ins, riots, even in broad daylight with hundreds of spectators. Now, I’m sure that you’re fully aware that it is rather difficult to kill a dragon. But, it was its daily occurrence. Dragon cores were destroyed, newly-laid eggs thrown from high piers to bob rotten along the salty waves of seven seas, entire breeds shredded until they could no longer exist, Siren, Tiger, Wolf, and many other dragon breeds died in the efforts. Oh, I’m forgetting one.

“The Mystics died amongst a genocide roughly fifty years ago. They were referred to as the most ferocious, the ones to prove highly likely as savages.”

Before the ice dragon can ask any questions, the deer that they were patiently waiting for to arrive eventually did, Hongjoong’s gut growling again. “T-Teach me how to kill it, please.” The ice dragon’s pupils contracted to those reptilian slits from his hunger lust.

“It’s quite simple.” Seonghwa makes the clicking sound with his tongue and the deer unknowingly saunters closer to the Mystic, his sharp claws gentle to graze under the deer’s chin endearingly. It was a rather sick contrast to what Hongjoong was about to submit this poor innocent animal to. “I prefer to use claws but Mingi uses a process with his teeth. It’s a lot—”

“I’ll use my claws,” Hongjoong interjects.

Seonghwa nods. “Puncture the major arteries lining the back of his neck here. The quicker you do it, the less it will hurt him.” Seonghwa grazes his claws along the short fur of the deer’s neck. “After that, your deer will go limp but it won’t die. With the other hand, locate the major artery along the front of his neck.”

Was Hongjoong slightly nervous about this? Admittedly, yes, but the pains of his hunger and how to kill it was his first concern at the moment. “How do you eat it?”

“Tear the skin with your teeth, it’s not edible. Everything else is.” That included the bones.

A slightly wavering hand outstretched to where Seonghwa’s was originally petting the prey animal. Despite the Mystic leader’s advice that quick motions would equal less pain, there was still that small pang of guilt lurking in his chest, no matter how much his stomach had pleaded for a proper feeding. So, Hongjoong’s black-tipped claws began to pierce the animal’s flesh very slowly, resulting in a high grunt from the deer he was inflicting such pain on. Seonghwa merely watched with sympathy bleeding in his eyes for both the deer and Hongjoong. It wasn’t appropriate to try and correct his technique at this time.

Eventually though, Hongjoong exerts enough pressure that the deer’s body is too heavy to hold himself up on his legs and collapses down on the ground with a grunt. Then, Hongjoong takes out his claws from the back of his neck to the front. He stabs the front of his neck with his eyes screwed shut, blood now gushing onto his hand.

“I’ll be behind that tree… being sick,” the ice dragon informs him before he turns away from the deer, not even making it behind the tree and getting sick on his shoes.

Seonghwa sighs softly. Well, it was better than he thought he would do.


	5. Chapter 5

The car ride back up to the arena was painfully silent. Just yesterday, news outlets across the nation reported on Choi San who had fatally injured mentor Park Jinyoung during a heated game of Stadium. If San could’ve skipped Adelaide’s Day, he would’ve. He would’ve flung open the car door, done a barrel roll into the nearest ditch on the side of the road, and stayed there until Wooyoung found him. But, skipping Adelaide’s Day was basically a criminal offense in mancerhood and San was drowning in enough hot water as it is. He’d already heard too much from his father about it and he didn’t want to hear anymore of it.

The walk up to the arena was also something that was glorified in shuffling feet up the stairs and photographers clicking for photos. Yunho pushed himself in front of Wooyoung and San to get his pictures done first.

Despite the event being one to determine the future of his mancerhood, Yunho had dressed to fit his mother’s side of the family, representing his halfling elven blood. He was in a beautiful silver fabric tunic that stopped mid-thigh with flowering sleeves. The fabric was see-through but enough was wrapped around his chest to conceal potentially revealing parts of his body, mostly his chest. A simple silk belt dyed silver was tied around his waist. His entire palette was elven silver, what his mother would wear when she was still a member of the kingdom.

“Don’t those earrings hurt?” Wooyoung asked, pointing up to the long silver shrink dangling from each point of cartilage on his ears. He wouldn’t dare touch them. They were his mother’s.

They were thin, silver strings that were pinned on the highest point of his ear that stretched down a little bit past his shoulders. It would’ve been more than easy to accidentally snag them on something and tear his ear off but silver was a metal that could harbor spells easily. “A little bit,” the halfling responds over the clicks and flashes of cameras, posing cooly like he was a celebrity. His hair was a platinum blonde with brown roots exposed today. The silver foil under his eyes and metallic gloss shine like glitter under the spotlights. He looked absolutely stunning.

Yunho was ushered off to the side, photographers awaiting the arrival of either Wooyoung or San, however, they were more anticipating the latter though (no offense to Wooyoung, of course). He was the buzz person of the week, especially after San had incapacitated Jinyoung during that game of Stadium. That and he was the Choi family’s next heir to assume everything that was dark magic.

Wooyoung steps forward first, giving the dark magic mancer a chance to recompose his sour mood even just a little bit. “I’ll go for you,” the two-toned hair mancer pats San’s shoulder before making his way to the photo strip, the small black veins stretched along the back of his hands gently pulsing with the dark magic mancer’s emotions. He shoves them in his sleek black dress slacks.

For the first time in his life, Wooyoung looked rather presentable. His black-and-blonde hair was neatly crimped, swept away from his pierced eyebrow. His makeup was done in reasonable taste, mostly nude accents decorating his eyes, not like the silver bomb that was Jeong Yunho. However, it didn’t really count since it was traditional for Yunho’s culture. He traded out his oversized graphic tees and ripped jeans in favor of a white button-up with a pretty black ribbon tied up into a long bow. Still with that Wooyoung touch, as always. He didn’t skip out on his rings and a few chunky chains on his belt loops. San just had to keep his temper in check or else his family ring would twist and release that darker Wooyoung.

When the light magic mancer had finished, San was next. As soon as he stepped forward, every single camera flash had gone off and the photographers were getting their mouths running and multiple interviewers turning from any person they were talking to just to shove their microphone in his face.

Right now, San hated Adelaide’s Day. Even if he hadn’t beaten Jinyoung to a pulp yesterday, there would still be all of these new outlets riding him every chance they could get because he was a dark magic mancer, he’s Choi San.

“San! What was going through your mind when you beat Jinyoung yesterday!?” “Have you had the chance to speak to Jinyoung!?” “Is your father proud of your either Triple X Platinum?” “Do you have any prediction as to who your dragon is?”

_ He knows your dragon, San-i! _

San swallows hard, remembering the anguished face on Jinyoung when he told him about the Maddox.

Yunho silently gasps when he notices San’s family ring beginning to turn on his finger, Wooyoung letting out a snarl as it does. The halfling pushes past the photographers and interviewers that had begun swarming him, thanking his massive size for being able to push through. “Choi San is not answering questions, providing statements, or accepting interviews. This is Adelaide’s Day so if you are not an eligible mancer, his family has requested that there be no interactions. Thank you.”

Everyone voices out their anger with Yunho’s uncalled for intervention, the halfling holding San by the wrist to pull him out of there. His striped blazer almost got caught on an interviewer’s spiked bangle. “Hey, you okay? You’ve got Wooyoung looking like a demon almost. Breathe with me, alright?” Yunho takes in deep breaths through his nose and out of his mouth, San soon following.

“This entire day is getting to me,” San says plainly, shaking his hands to release his nerves. His skin was almost vibrating from it.

“Hey, big boy,” Wooyoung says, rubbing San’s shoulder soothingly. Luckily, with the dark magic finally calming down, Wooyoung’s skin was reverting back to normal. “Relax a little bit. Evaluation is just a few minutes away.”

San nods a little bit, sighing softly. “I’m just ready for this nightmare of a day to be over. I’m still thinking about what Jinyoung said… about my dragon.”

“It’s impossible to determine your dragon before evaluation,” a blue-haired boy with thin-framed glasses says.

The dark magic mancer offers a gentle smile. “Oh, hey, Yeonjun. Are you evaluating or being evaluated? Sorry, there are so many Choi family cousins that I forgot all of the ages.”

“Evaluated. But, I couldn’t help but overhear about Jinyoung saying something about knowing your dragon,” the cousin mancer says, sort of worming his way deeper into the conversation between the other three mancers.

San had to bite back on a nasty snarl. Yeonjun had absolutely no clue what happened between him and Jinyoung in that arena. This wasn’t his place yet he was trying to dig a hole like it was supposed to be. “Weird, isn’t it?” San hisses through his teeth, the veins on Wooyoung’s hands starting to pulse black again.

“So, Yeonjun-ah!” Yunho had to derail the state of this conversation… and fast. Wooyoung looked like he had been sucking lemons with how much his body twitched. “Have you met any evaluators yet?”

Yeonjun merely shakes his head. “Choi family blood always goes last since we have the most powerful magic.” San never really knew for sure whether or not the blue-haired mancer was anti-light magic like the rest of his family was. It definitely wouldn’t be surprising if he was.

The dark magic mancer, who was about to blow his head with how he was biting back venom to make sure that Wooyoung wouldn’t snap his neck by default, pulls at the black frills of his turtleneck-like blouse that had suddenly felt suffocating around his neck. “Doesn’t mean that anybody hasn’t informed you of any evaluators. We have sources as you always like to remind me.”

“I’m going to the bathroom,” Wooyoung announces, feeling a burning sensation in his throat that was most likely vomit from the excess of dark magic that had been fluctuating in his veins. He was also nervous about Evaluation.

What if they can see that he had two kinds of magic battling for dominance in his body? Would San get in trouble, too? It was his magic. Could they tell if San was the one who made him like this?

“Is he going to faint?” Yeonjun’s eyebrow raises in suspicion. He had always wondered why San and Wooyoung almost joined at the hip out of nowhere one day and stayed that way since. Yunho has also been rather dismissive when San looked like he was about to explode. Strange.

Yunho places his hand behind Wooyoung’s back, about to escort Wooyoung to the bathroom before a voice bellow. “Jung Wooyoung?”

Everyone turns towards the origin of the voice, a black-haired man strolling through, seated in a wheelchair.

“Jinyoung?” They all say at once.

There’s a blanket covering his lap, a heavy cast wrapped around a majority of his right leg. His head is covered in bandages and an eyepatch covers his right eye. San feels a small pang of guilt when he sees what he had done to Jinyoung.

At least he’s alive.

“Jinyoung, I’m so—”

The mentor holds up his hand to stop him from finishing that apology. “Jung Wooyoung, you are to be evaluated immediately.”

Well, there went the plan to hide out in the bathroom until Adelaide’s Day was officially over.

Wooyoung lets out a shudder when it’s his turn to be evaluated. He leans towards Yunho, though the halfling had to bend his knees to hear what he had to say. Could you blame him? Yunho was like a skyscraper compared to the other mancers. “ _ Please  _ keep a leash on hyung. They can’t have a single hint of dark magic in me.”

The consequences were dastardly.

“Relax, Woo. I’ve got this all under control,” Yunho reassures with a soft smile and a small wink.

Jinyoung sighs, obviously tired physically. Why were they making him work Evaluation anyway? “Let’s go, Mr. Jung. We’ll run out of daylight with your little gossip circle.” He crosses his arms over his chest, wanting to escort the mancer into the evaluation room.

The two-toned boy gives a glance over to San who seems to understand what he’s conveying.

_ Don’t lose it. _

Wooyoung follows Jinyoung into a room where the heavy double doors close with a low thud, enough to feel vibrations in anybody’s feet.

"I hope that he does okay,” San grumbles.

Yeonjun, who was spectating the scene until Wooyoung’s departure, raises an eyebrow towards his cousin. “All he has to do is cast his magic into the bonfire and all will be revealed. Color of the flame tells what dragon breed you need.”

“Geez, Yeonjun, we know,” San spits. “We all learned that from primary school.”

Yunho definitely recognizes the tension between the two Choi cousins. He brings up his arm, almost like he was reading a watch. “Ah, Sannie, we have to go uh… meet that mancer friend of mine! Yeah, he’s getting evaluated as well!”

San is confused but he doesn’t let it show. Maybe this was some sort of diversion so that he didn’t blow up and make Wooyoung a killer with some sort of homicidal rage and murder every evaluator in the room. Although, judging from how San was trying not to snap his cousin’s neck, that was probably the case.

“Yeah. We should get going,” San says flatly, already walking down the hallway to get out of Yeonjun’s sight.

The halfling offers an awkward smile towards the blue-haired dark mancer. “Good to meet you, Yeonjun.” Then, Yunho is down to chase the other Choi mancer down.

“Now I remember why I chose to forget who he was,” San says bluntly. “It’s because I cannot stand his guts.”

In all honesty, San was not the biggest fan of his extended family either. Hell, he could barely function with his immediate family for a few minutes at some points.

“He wasn’t absolutely terrible,” Yunho remarks, the tips of his hair shifting into that sky blue.

San definitely takes notice when the halfling’s hair shifts just ever so slightly. Yunho might as well be as readable as a childrens’ book. “Your hair says otherwise.” The brunette with the blue tips was definitely not the best look on him.

Yunho blushes, the roots of his hair now a furious pink, almost peach actually. That was a new color to San though… and to Yunho.

“Has your hair ever gone pink before?” San points up to the top of the elven mancer’s head. “Your roots.”

Unfortunately, there were no mirrors in the hall so Yunho would have to take San’s word for it. “Don’t be joking today. Wooyoung has already got me psyched out enough as it is.”

“No, Yunnie, I promise your roots are some shade of pink right now.”

The elven mancer blushes more, his hair now fully peach pink. Good thing that a considerable length of it was dangling in front of his eyes just a little bit. “Holy shit! My hair is peach!”

But, with Yunho and San’s new discovery of an elven shade for his hair came with Yunho not seeing where he was going and bumping into somebody with scales.

A dragon!

“Ah, good Heavens, my apologies,” the dragon of purple scales bows small, the other mancers repaying the favor despite the run-in being Yunho’s fault for being distracted by his new hair color. “Are you two mancers?”

“Yes!” Yunho says with avidity. “This is the Evaluation Hall for Adelaide’s Day after all. But dragons aren’t usually allowed back here.”

Purple-scaled dragon (San would safely assume that he was a Lunar dragon thanks to that characteristics and identification unit during Academy) merely gives them a sharp grin. “I’m looking for my mancer, Park Jinyoung. He’s in a wheelchair currently after what happened at Stadium yesterday afternoon.”

That quickly gains San’s attention. “You’re Lim Jaebeom.”

The dragon’s smile merely grows. “I am. Have we met?”

“No, I just know that Jinyoung manced a Lunar dragon named Jaebeom. I assume that you are also the leader of the Thunder of Eclipse, correct?” San asks.

Jaebeom nods in a distinguished way. Neither of the mancers had ever formally met a leader of a dragon Thunder so this was definitely a first for San and Yunho. “Correct. It took convincing to be manced but here we are. Speaking of, have you seen him around here?”

“He just escorted our mancer friend a while ago. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a mancer so… beat up,” Yunho informs him.

Jaebeom sighs sadly. “I told him not to go to Evaluation.” So then it was Jinyoung’s decision to come. “He was recently targeted by a higher power. I am unsure of who or what but I can feel it in my blood.”

San thinks back to what had happened yesterday when Jinyoung was coughing up blood like a tuberculosis patient and San asked who had spelled him. “The Maddox,” San says in a voice so low it could have been considered a whisper.

“I’m sorry?” Jaebeom cocks an eyebrow at how the dark-clothed mancer was speaking secrets under his breath. “Can you speak up so that I don’t have to assume you as an enemy of our race?”

“Are you saying that just because I’m a dark magic mancer?” San says in chagrin. He’s gone through this kind of stuff before. He’s either feared or accidentally filling in the social requirement to be feared.

The Thunder leader rolls his eyes with a scoff. “Well, rumors around Seoul say that the Chois are in cahoots with the Maddox and his little insolent Kasein. Consider it a habit to lump all dark magic in support of the Maddox.”

“Jaebeom!” Jinyoung calls, moving his wheelchair to the two mancers and his dragon. “What are you doing here? And why are you trying to stir up the dust with mancers right now?”

Hopefully Wooyoung had moved to processing when San had almost spit on Jaebeom. Any drop of San’s magic on Wooyoung would get him in a guillotine.

“Mark saw you leave today. I knew that you would come here even though I told you not to. As for these two, I merely bumped into them.” Jaebeom’s face no longer holds remorse. Yunho’s hair shifts to a lighter shade of pink.

Jinyoung rolls his eyes. “I’m sorry about him. He’ll be leaving the Evaluation Hall now.”

“Not without you,” Jaebeom interjects.

Yunho and San might have well been spectators of an old married couple with how they were standing so still waiting for the dusts of this argument to settle.

“I have a job, hyung. I suggest you not interfere with it or it’s going to cost you tremendously,” Jinyoung sneers before steering towards the elven mancer with a kaleidoscope of hair by the time this argument ends. “Jeong Yunho. You are to be evaluated immediately. If you could follow me this way, please?”

Yunho gives a timid nod.

“Don’t make me call security, Beom. Only mancers are allowed here during Adelaide’s Day,” Jinyoung reminds him.

Either the mancer in the wheelchair had spelled the Lunar dragon under his breath or Jaebeom really had no more words to speak. Although, judging by the lack of magic fizzling at Jinyoung’s fingertips (probably from how weak he was thanks to Choi San), it was just Jaebeom deciding not to speak.

And left in silence, San looks back up to the dragon who had his mouth slightly agape.

“I think that it’s in everybody’s best interest that you leave, Jaebeom,” San says rather bluntly.

Jaebeom lets out a huff, a soft plume of black smoke billowing from his nostrils. Typical for dragons when they grow irritated. “I know that you know something, mancer.”

“And if I do?” San raises an eyebrow.

The Thunder of Eclipse’s leader’s posture stiffens, his spine almost pin straight. “I have ways of getting it out of you.”

“Anybody can say that.”

The dragon is probably biting back the urge to stomp his foot like a child. Devil’s and Lunar dragons usually had the worst temper out of all of the breeds. It was funny now, San’s teaching informing him that the Thunder of Eclipse was one of the oldest Thunders established since dragons had begun to band together. Those creatures always worked better in tight-knit circles, like wolves in a pack. This Thunder leader might as well have been a tantrum child.

“Not everybody can mean it like I do,” Jaebeom hisses.

San only offers a sigh. “A threat like that could book you trouble with the Kasein.” Even though San didn’t stand for the Kasein like his father and the rest of his family did, he knew that dragons had no choice to fear it or they would risk impoundment. Was that a bit of a coward’s move? Yes, but something about telling a manced dragon that the Maddox had allegedly spelled his mancer didn’t line up perfectly. Something just seemed… off.

Jaebeom scoffs with a roll of his eyes. “Why, you little…” He approaches San quickly, a dangerous glint in his eyes. His claws of black are outstretched, probably aiming right for his jugular.

The dark magic mancer was quick to summon his bo staff to protect himself, as well as the magic that stays to tingle in his fingertips. He pulls his staff horizontal to push back the dragon. What did he do to piss him and Jinyoung off anyway? “Watch it, Jaebeom!”

All the dragon lets out is a malicious snarl. Dragons never attack without reason, especially with the Kasein being more enforced thoroughly by the day.

Don’t Lunar dragons have purple eyes?

Jaebeom’s were silver and almost cloudy in the pupil. The reptilian slit was still there, of course, and it was strong as Jaebeom snapped his jaws at San.

A stream of blue magic strikes Jaebeom in the side and it makes him howl out in pain.

Yeonjun!

“Choi San, why in the everliving hell is there a feral Lunar  _ dragon  _ back here!?” The Choi cousin shoots another orb towards Jaebeom’s knee to take out his ability to stand. The dragon’s knees buckle as he falls onto his side.

San raises his staff. “He was looking for his mancer and we got into a little bit of an argument over the Kasein.”

“San, you know damn well you can’t taunt a dragon with the Kasein without losing an eye,” Yeonjun derides, Jaebeom watching the two mancers with a furrow of his eyebrows. “Who is his mancer anyway?”

“Park Jinyoung," San says with an exhale. Something was wrong.

It almost seemed too familiar…

“Yeonjun, your mother taught dragon breed classification. Do his eyes look like a Lunar’s to you?” San asks, keeping a ball of magic in case Jaebeom tried something.

And he did, letting his teeth sink into Yeonjun’s right ankle when he gained enough strength to crawl over there. The blue-haired mancer can’t help but let out a curse as a bolt of his magic strikes the dragon in the head. “Shit!”

With the amount of power that was in that hit, Jaebeom was knocked out cold, chest barely moving.

“I didn’t tell you to  _ kill  _ him, Yeonjun!” San barks.

Blood from Yeonjun’s bite wound is already pooling into his sock. “I didn’t! He bit me and you’re worried about a dead dragon. What are cousins for?”

_ To annoy me until the rest of my days,  _ San wants to say but he knows better not to. “Something wasn’t right with him.” The leader of a Thunder doesn’t just do that.

“Yeah, no shit, San, he  _ attacked  _ you! How did he even get back here on Adelaide’s Day?”

San bites back a growl. “Choi Yeonjun, we’re not focusing on that right now! Look at his eyes.”

Both mancers make it onto their knees, each one of them on either side of him with San facing his front and Yeonjun examining his back.

“Flip him onto his back so that I can look into his eyes.”

San pulls while Yeonjun pushes, the dragon landing on his back with a puff of black smoke leaving his nostrils. The older mancer checks for a pulse in his wrist while Yeonjun peels his eyelids apart.

“Silver? No, that can’t be right. A Lunar dragon’s irises are purple, not silver. No dragon has silver eyes.” Yeonjun raises an eyebrow.

San finds a barely existing pulse. The magic had hit him hard but he was a dark dragon and he knew how to fight the effects… hopefully. “He never shot his fire.”

“Choi San, what the fuck is going on?” Yeonjun’s expression is firm but there is definitely confusion painted all over it. Honestly, San was perplexed as well.

“Jaebeom!?” A shriek is heard from down the hall, Jinyoung quick to wheel his way into the scene. “San, what did you two  _ do _ !?”

San lets his bo staff collapse in his palm, the magic left in his hand making it disappear completely so that it can be called back again when the time calls for it. “He attacked me. Well, he tried to.”

“Attacked you? Dragons don’t attack unless it’s a last resort because of the Maddox and the Kasein,” Jinyoung says with an equal amount of bewilderment and concern laced in his voice.

Yeonjun moves to stand up, facing Jinyoung with a slanted posture because of the bite on his ankle. “Are his eyes usually silver or grey in color?”

“What kind of nonsense are you spewing? A Lunar dragon’s eyes are purple, a shade darker than their scales. That should be basic breed classification. Didn’t your mother teach this?”

To prove that his cousin was in fact  _ not  _ spewing nonsense (and to save him from the embarrassment of basically being called incompetent), San opens Jaebeom’s closed eyelids just like Yeonjun had done. “Look, hyung.”

Jinyoung pushes the wheels of his chair closer to the dragon on the floor, leaning over to see what color his eyes were. They were…

“Purple,” Jinyoung states matter-of-factly. “His eyes are purple, like they always have been.”

Oh, that definitely earns a confused look from both Choi mancers who were victims of the attack. How could that even be possible?

“I swear on my life, his eyes were silver,” Yeonjun continues to defend. “And he bit me!” Just to show proof, Yeonjun lifts up his pants leg, revealing his socks that mix white and red from a steadily bleeding bite wound.

Even Jinyoung has to raise an eyebrow at that one. “You’re positive Jaebeom did this? He’s a leader of a Thunder and he doesn’t practice unprovoked violence.” Jinyoung continues to scan the hallway so that no other mancers tread further to see an unconscious dragon on the floor surrounded by three mancers not doing much to help him. “Wait a minute… what happened before he ‘attacked’ you?”

The light magic mancer still doesn’t seem to believe them by the tone of his voice.

“Okay, I may admittedly… partially be at fault for antagonizing him,” San confesses flatly.

Jinyoung rolls his eyes. “Of course you did,” he mumbles under his breath. “San, do you even realize what you’ve done? If  _ anyone  _ under the Kasein hears that he assaulted another mancer, one of the Chois, he’ll face impoundment. It’s a damn miracle that he even got back here at all.”

“What happens in impoundment?” the blue-haired mancer asks, mostly out of curiosity. They don’t exactly teach it in any academy. “It’s like… mortal jail, right?”

Jinyoung has to laugh at that. “You’re funny, Choi. Mortals get a slap on the wrist if you bite someone in physical assault. But a dragon’s entire livelihood gets taken away from them. Those necklaces you see around their necks, those are their cores. It’s what makes them dragons, both born and made ones. They take their cores in the pound and smash them in front of them. While the made dragons who were originally mortal will just revert to a weakened state, born dragons like Jaebeom will die.”

Silence brews between the three mancers.

“Just go to the Evaluation, San,” Jinyoung says with urgency. “I need to get him out of here before any of the Maddox’s drones see him.”

Before San can get another word out, Jinyoung has guided his chair between him and Jaebeom’s body. The raven-haired Choi assumes that Yeonjun will be forced to do the grim task of trying to sneak out an unconscious dragon. Well, he was the one who knocked him out in the first place so it is only fair.

For once, San bites his tongue, fleeing away from the scene to make his way towards the double doors that both Wooyoung and Yunho had gone through. It opens to a long hallway that holds nothing along its walls. They are painted creme on one side and charcoal on the other, the symbolism of the divide between light and dark magic.

The dark magic mancer has a feeling that the sight alone made Wooyoung even more anxious. After all, he has become both at once!

Oh, he really hopes that the Evaluators didn’t catch sight of his hidden dark magic.

The hallway is so empty that San can hear his own footsteps echo along the walls. It gives San an uneasy feeling, so much so that San lets his magic tingle at his fingertips. It’s definitely easy to tell that he is still on edge from Jaebeom earlier.

Wow, how long is this damn hallway!? Is he just so in his head that it feels like it’s taking two hours to make it to the end? As he finally approaches the foot of the hallway, San faces a mirror that touches the ceiling and finds its bottom on the seam of the floor. It’s easy to tell that Wooyoung dressed him, his suit strikingly similar to the skeleton from  _ The Nightmare before Christmas _ . His pie chart hair is slicked back, a decorative purple gem stuck to his cheek. His eye makeup is in heavy rings of blacks and violets. His best friend always does wonders for him.

He can see his magic spark from his fingertips. Purple has always been his color but the dragon with a purple fire has been gone for nearly fifty years. Anything close to that would be a Lunar dragon with their purple scales and honestly, San isn’t sure that he can deal with one of those. Need evidence?

Just look at the one who is being hauled out by a Choi cousin and Jinyoung in a wheelchair!

_ “This is your destiny,” _ the left side of the room stained black bellows. San’s head darts around, the sparks soon congregating together to form a pulsating orb the size of a tennis ball in his palm.  _ “Assume the Choi position of power for all dark mancerkind.” _

The voice sounds just like his father.

As San gets dizzy trying to distinguish the voice breaking through the walls, there’s an image of a man in the mirror out of the corner of his eye… and it’s not San. Instead it’s another ravenette who is a couple inches taller than the mancer. He’s stretched head to toe in a crisp black suit, a necklace tucked under the collar. A purple, tooth-like charm hangs by the end of it.

A dragon.

Black scales lay along his outer forearms, neck, and chest, though it’s on slivers with how his button-up fits. Claws replace fingernails and horns stretch from the crown of his skull, except his right one is broken, only half of it still intact. A gorgeous amethyst jewel is suspended between his horns by pure silver chains. Purple flames erupt behind him.

_ “San!” _

The mancer lets out a gasp, aiming his magic orb straight for the mirror. With the power of the impact, glass from the mirror shrapnels, San bringing his arms over his head to protect his face. San is too hopped up on trying to figure out who the dragonesque figure in the mirror is that he doesn’t even realize that he has cuts now bleeding from the glass shooting across the room.

“Mystics are extinct, San,” the mancer tells himself, taking a deep breath. Still, he’s positive it was that figure yelling his name before he accidentally smashed the mirror. “Snap out of it.”

Any light in the room has suddenly snuffed out. The mancer is suddenly swallowed in darkness, San pulling more magic to light his way. Except he is not in the same room. The black-and-white walls were engulfed into black backgrounds and purple sparkles. A large ring of rocks lay in the middle of the room. This is the legendary bonfire that younger mancers heard of.

The color of the flame determined what dragon he would be required to mance.

_ “With a dragon by your side, you’ll be unstoppable. This is what you were born to do. Cast your magic! Light the flame!” _

Unable to bicker against the bellowing voice bouncing along the walls, San summons another orb of his magic, slightly smaller because of the powerful punch that it could offer once it hits its target. The bonfire only needs a little bit to spark the flame and give San his life-changing fate.

However, no small size will ever account for the sheer power of dark magic.

San casts his magic dead center into the rock circle in the floor, the spell bewitched on the stones beginning to absorb San’s magic. The room falls into pitch black. It’s silent for a moment before San can hear the room start to rumble. Cracks begin to form along the walls and the floor, a violet light aggressively glowing in between. San staggers back, suddenly finding his back pressed up against a wall.

Sparks shoot from each rock placed in the circle, San trying to bring his own magic back into his palm, his first method of self-defense. However, nothing comes up. San’s skin itches from the vacant feeling.

“My magic!” San shouts as the sparks begin to erupt into a bright flame that starts white at first, startling the powerless mancer. With the first method of defense scratched out, San reaches for the collapsible bo staff in his pocket.

He doesn’t remember the stories of Evaluation being this… intense.

_ “What can you do without your magic?” _ the disembodied voice thunders. And San has to ask that question himself, too. All of his life, he used magic first to protect himself but now, all he has is his staff and his wit.

What’s left of it.

The white flame soon begins to shift darker, San expecting a black flame for a Lunar dragon. God, how the hell is he going to tame and mance one of those!? But as San waits a little longer, it goes…

“Purple?” San says, almost like he is asking the room. The fire crackling in the rocks bleeds an iridescent violet, beginning to reach up to the ceiling. “That’s impossible!”

A purple flame belongs to a Mystic dragon, a breed known for being able to drain the power from a dragon or mancer and use it as their own. The Kasein ruled that all of them had died in the War of Darkness, thus ruling out the breed of black-scaled, yellow-eyed, purple flame wielders extinct. Is San supposed to mance a damn corpse!?

There’s something wrong though. As San is trying to figure out why the fire is  _ that  _ color, it begins to crawl up the walls, smoke beginning to cloud the room in a thick haze, sapping San’s ability to breathe. Without his magic, he really has no way to break out of these four walls that are beginning to burn up. San’s magic is powerful and it has fed the flame to grow until it can’t. Even though it is  _ his  _ magic, he no longer hosts control over it.

“Help!” San screams, turning around to bang his fists on the wall in front of him. “Someone help! My magic was st—” He sputters out a couple coughs, his eyes beginning to water from the ash hitting them. “Magic… It was stolen!”

The height of the flames makes it hard to discern any other exits. Not to mention that this is not the same room that he had entered. It is an enclosed space of four walls, the floor, and the ceiling.

No way in… no way out.

San peels off his suit jacket, using it to cover his nose and mouth to prevent any more smoke from entering his lungs. Wow, is he really going to die at such a young age on Adelaide’s Day, no less? He tries to summon his magic back to his fingers but all he comes up with is a fizzle of sparks.

The purple flames begin to paint the wall, leaving a small piece of the room untouched. The same section that San occupies. “Please… help me…”

_ “San!” _

The mancer’s head darts around, trying to discern who the hell it is! It’s not somebody that he knows but he almost has a similar accent to San’s. San has met many people thanks to his Choi status but he knows that this voice is new to him… yet it almost seems so familiar.

_ “It won’t hurt you! My fire won’t hurt you!” _

That merely confuses San. It’s fire! It is using his magic to make it bigger and hotter. The mancer still hasn’t realized that the fire still hasn’t touched him. San lets out a heavy sigh, screwing his eyes shut as he reaches his free hand out into the fire. This voice makes San relax a little bit. He really can’t believe that he is doing this right now… did his father have to trust the voice of a disembodied voice hoping that he wouldn’t die at the age of twenty-one, too?

There’s no heat around his arm. San peeks through one eye, finding that his skin isn’t burning. The fire is actually… wrapping around him. The smoke is still heavy but it’s not painful. He shifts his foot, following his leg until he finally dismounts away from his safe spot against the wall.

Oh, if San could see himself now. Fire literally surrounds him in a thick sheet, like he is being swallowed up in a blanket. It moves with him fluidly, San getting bold by walking around the room. He doesn’t control it but it works around him…  _ with him.  _ It astounds San, especially with such a breed like a Mystic.

They are most likely the hardest dragons to mance according to the history books. Only a small fraction of them were able to be tied down by magic for the rest of their lives. Will San be able to do it though?

Now that San knows that he is not in any impending danger, he paces the room trying to find an exit, keeping his jacket pressed against his nose and mouth. How is he supposed to get out of here? Is this what Wooyoung and Yunho had to go through, too?

San looks down for a moment, noticing the cracks in the floor from where the room had rumbled prior to it bursting into flames. It’s almost like thin ice with how it continues cracking. He quickly flicks out his bo staff, using the pointed end of it to keep breaking through the floor. San isn’t sure about what’s at the bottom but his curiosity always manages to overtake him.

He stabs three points, watching the floor buckle, San gasping as he falls through, not meeting fire but ice cold water. The fire blankets the surface of the water but it won’t follow him. It is trapping him. San is trying to hold his breath but his lungs already burn from the amount of smoke clogging them up. So he really will die today.

It’s a gamble to ignite magic in water but he hardly has a chance since he doesn’t have his magic with him. With the fire, it has betrayed San, trapping the mancer under the surface of the water like an oil fire. San’s hope is weaning, merely treading under the water with no way out.

_ “San! Oh my God, San!”  _ A voice bellows from above though it is muffled. A pair of hands break through the fire blanketing the water, San looking up with wide eyes. There’s black claws and knuckle spikes, black scales on the backs of his hands. In the dark magic mancers desperation, San swims up, kicking his legs until his calves burn so that he can reach up and be pulled out of the water.

San jolts awake, coughing up a fit, almost like his lungs had been burning. His chest ached and his vision was slightly spotty. “Choi. You in there?” Now there’s a familiar voice.

Eden.

The mancer looks around frantically, seeing Yunho, Wooyoung, and Eden. Then he looks down towards his own body, his clothes soaking wet. His pinstripe suit jacket is missing and he has the heavy stench of smoke on his skin. “Wh-”

“Woo pulled you out of the fountain,” Yunho says. “We got worried when we didn’t see you leave the Evaluation room.” How long had he been in there? And how could he have been in the damn fountain?

Wooyoung furrows his eyebrows. “Where is your jacket?”

Eden rubs San’s back, causing the mancer to flinch. He had already been through so much earlier and he doesn’t need a damn hunter to be consoling him. “The room caught fire, so I needed a rag to cover my nose and mouth. Well, that was before I walked  _ through  _ the fire.”

“Where the hell did you go?” Wooyoung asks. San takes another lap around with his eyes, seeing that he is sitting on the ledge of the fountain that the three had found him in. San has questions, too many to count but there seems to be one lingering in the back of his mind.

Has his magic returned?

Just to test the waters, San starts to rub his upper arms, hoping with everything that he has that his magic comes back. His clothes suddenly blow in a gust of wind, instantly drying his body. He lets out a sigh of relief knowing that his magic is safe and sound inside of him. He lets it rest at his fingertips just because he couldn’t stand the empty feeling when it was sucked away from his body.

“Hey, Choi… are you okay?” Eden asks but San can’t even acknowledge a hunter right now. San’s mind is just going a million miles an hour and it is almost too much for him.

“Has the bonfire ever been wrong?” San asks, not exactly sure  _ who  _ he is asking though but he really has to know. “Like, let’s say for example… hypothetically, if I was given an  _ extinct  _ dragon according to the Kasein… it’s wrong, right?”

Both Yunho and Wooyoung look at each other in confusion, probably wondering if he had hit his head or something. Not to mention that cool-headed and prepareded Choi San is panicking, almost like he had seen a ghost.

In San’s mind, he basically had!

“What breed?” Eden asks inquisitively.

“Mystic,” he replies plainly. Now the other light magic mancers in front of him look even more confused.

Wooyoung raises an eyebrow. “That’s impossible. The Kasein ruled them extinct with the other breeds that died in the War of Darkness. What, do they expect you to mance a damn corpse!?”

“Well, what if I told you that the history books made a tiny misprint?” Eden replies a little bit enigmatically. “That your bonfire is in fact correct.”

Now that statement snags everyone’s attention, especially San’s. “What the hell are you saying?”

Eden stands up on his feet, the tacky buckles clinking against the out-of-place zippers of his outfit. “Let me save all three of you the trouble of going in three different directions in order to mance your dragons. The Thunder of Horizon has what you need up in Seoraksan.

“For you, Yun, a glitzy Solar dragon who is no stranger to makeup and heels hails from some old age century in Europe. Goes by Kang Yeosang and what I love to refer to as a migraine waiting to happen.

“A Lunar dragon for Wooyoung, which is usually reserved for dark magic mancers. They must have picked up on your half magic thing. The dragon in question is Vietnam veteran Lieutenant Choi Jongho. He’s a hard one to get to settle from what I’ve heard, making it a bitch and a half to tie him down.

“And finally, you, Choi San. The leader of the Thunder of Horizon, the last living Mystic dragon: Park Seonghwa. He’s got a long list of centuries in his pocket but he hasn’t been manced  _ once _ . He flies without fear of the Kasein because the book won’t hit what’s been labelled as an extinct species. If you mance  _ the  _ Park Seonghwa, you’re golden, Choi.”

“So this Seonghwa guy… he really is the last Mystic? Like this isn’t a joke you’re pulling or anything, right?” Wooyoung asks.

Eden nods firmly. “I can drive you up to Seoraksan if you want.”

San just looks like he’s in shock. This whole time he was mentally preparing himself for a Lunar dragon, knowing that he can at least formulate a fraction of a plan when he gets to that stage. But a Mystic - the last one in existence, according to Eden - and San doesn’t even know where to begin.

“I think we’ll turn down the offer,” Yunho cuts in, his hair brunette at the roots but shifting into a blonde downwards. “Listen, it’s been a long day for San and I don’t think that you are exactly making it any better. Besides, Adelaide’s Day is exclusively for mancers.”

San can see Eden take offense to what Yunho has said, scoffing at his remark. “I believe I have some business to attend to anyway. Will I see you at the Fever for the celebration, at least?”

“I’m sure that we’ll try,” Wooyoung responds. “I’ll walk you out.”

Eden forces a chuckle. “No, it’s fine, Woo. San needs all of the help that he can get. I’ll see myself out.”

When Eden finally exits the picture, San looks up from the floor towards Yunho. “What did you guys see in your Evaluation rooms?”

“It was a room with four elder mancers at each corner. It was hard to tell who they were though with those hoods,” Yunho says.

Wooyoung rolls his eyes in disgust, crossing his arms firmly against his chest. “They looked like potato sacks.”

“And then the rock circle that they talked about when we were younger. Toss your magic in, the color of the flame equals the dragon you got.” Yunho’s hair eventually shifts back to its neutral brown. “Mine was orange, Woo’s was black.”

Wooyoung sidles up next to San, resting his hand on his shoulder. “Did you really get a purple fire?” He squeezes San’s shoulder lightly.

“It stole my magic, just like a Mystic does. But as it was burning down the room, the fire never touched me. It moved  _ with  _ me. Then I fell through the floor into the water. I’m not entirely sure how I came out of the fountain. But… I saw an image of that Mystic,” San confesses. “If that Seonghwa guy is the same person that I saw in the mirror… I don’t know how I’ll be able to mance him.”

Yunho hums in thought. “We’ll go to the Adelaide’s Day celebration at the Fever. Then we’ll worry about those Horizon dragons. But isn’t Horizon the Thunder that Eden always bitches about?”

“Maybe, but if he really is right about this… if there really is a Mystic dragon left in the world and he happens to be in Seoraksan  _ exactly  _ where he said he would be… we’ll go from there,” San states.

Wooyoung lets out a heavy sigh. “Now how are you going to tell you dad?”

“I don’t even want to think about it right now.”


End file.
